


Raving Conscience

by RENielsen



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Character Death, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Niall-centric, OT5 Friendship, Past Character Death, Self-Harm, Space fighter AU, Spaceships, Violence, a tiny bit of nouis, captain niall, especially in the beginning, he got his reasons though, he's a bit of a jerk through most of this fic, past self harm, unsteady character, very light polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-11 14:00:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7895329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RENielsen/pseuds/RENielsen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"If I were you, Louis, I’d get the shields up now,” Niall says as a friendly reminder, as he sees how close two meteors is to each other, and knowing his ship as well as he does, he also knows that she won’t be able to totally avoid them with the speed they’re getting closer. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Which ones?” Louis asks sounding as calm as Niall could expect. </em>
</p><p><em>For a second, Niall pretends to be thinking about it then teasingly says, “I’d go for all of them. This is getting bumpy.” </em><br/> </p><p>Space fighter AU, featuring Captain Niall Horan and his crew Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Liam Payne and Zayn Malik on a mission to save entity Coyote from certain death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raving Conscience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mayerwien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [1D_Hiatus_Prompt_Meme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/1D_Hiatus_Prompt_Meme) collection. 



> I don't really know how I feel about this one honestly :/ Like I think it's one of the stories I've enjoyed writing the most out of all of the ones I've written, but as soon as I had to edit it, it suddenly feels like 43k of crap. Hopefully I'm just being silly and it's only half bad haha :)
> 
> I hope it was something along these lines you were looking for when you wrote your prompt! Enjoy reading!
> 
>  
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING! Please do NOT read if following things will trigger you in any way! I'd rather have you all by good health than anything else! Mentions of selfharm and past selfharm, character dead, descriptions of violence, descriptions of murder, character with a rough past, unsteady character, quite a lot of cursing

Niall watches as his crew go aboard in his ship; bags in their hands and over their shoulders. All of their faces still new to him, as he, the last time he was on a mission at the Void, lost his old crew, friends and family. They had been on a mission for the Resistance to impair The Order. The mission should have been easy enough, actually; just a simple job that ended quite disastrously. They were supposed to blow up, or in any other way make the Orders base... harmless, so to say. Niall personally quite liked the idea of just blowing the place up, and blown up it got.

It had been a trap, though. The Order had waited for them to get there, and while Niall had snuck into the base, Luke, Ashton, Calum and Michael had stayed at the ship, where Niall had thought they would be safe. As it turned out they weren’t, but as the captain Niall has the responsibility for his crew, which is why he had decided that if anyone should end up dying on the mission, then it should be himself, not his family. That, and out of the five of them, Niall was probably the most fit for doing it. So he had went in there, in the thought that they would be safe, but when he got back to the ship after placing explosive devises around the place, he saw the most terrifying thing in his life, and trust me he had already seen quite a lot of disaster. There was blood everywhere, maybe around five dead strangers and most important three dead family members.

Ashton had still been alive when he got there. His breath troubled and a deadly wound in his stomach. “Niall,” he had begun, trying to warn his captain about the enemies still being on the ship, but simply being too weak to actually finish the warning. It would have been too late anyway, because three men were already all over Niall. They didn’t stand a chance, but in a way Niall would have wished they had, because everyone that mattered to him were already dead anyway. He got to hold Ashton’s hand as the lad took his last breath, and he completed the mission as the base blew up as Niall wounded got his family home.

Today that’s exactly one year ago. The first couple of weeks he had used on getting better from the pathetic state he was in when he finally got home, and the months after that he had used on grieving over his loss and drinking to forget. Today is also the first time he has as much as looked at his beloved ship since he saw the dead bodies of his family being carried out of there.

As the last of the four lads enters the ship, Niall follows them in there, standing in the background as he sees how amazed they seem to be. He understands why, because Niall has always felt more than just proud of his ship; it being more than just a way to get around. No this place is his home, and he can’t help but feel incredible stupid for not seeing that before now. 

“Welcome aboard the Conscience or as I sometimes like to call it, the Raving Conscience. I’m Captain Niall Horan, and you lots are all absolutely insane for even thinking of being here. I will not tolerate whining, complaining or anything else that’ll end up giving me a headache. I beg you, and I mean really _beg_ you, to turn around and leave the Conscience if you don’t think you’re fit to be here, because there will be more bad times than good, and I can’t even promise you that you’ll survive the first mission.

In case you don’t care one bit about anything I just said, follow me,” he says as he moves deeper into the ship. What they’ve seen so far is nothing. The commando is the place they’ll spend most of their times, and it is personally Niall’s favourite room, but it’s still only a tiny bit of his ship.

For a couple of seconds he can only hear the sound of his own footsteps, and he can’t help but hope, just for a second, that these lads will take what he just said seriously and leave as fast as they possibly can, but then he hears the stumbling sound of four people quickly trying to catch up with him. He doesn’t exactly make it easy for them as he walks far quicker than most – and that is even with his achy knee – and doesn’t slow down his pace.

“This is as much my home as it’s my workplace, and I expect you all to respect that. I have two rooms for you, so you’ll bunk together two and two. Who you bunk with is totally up to you all. This is my room.”

He stands in front of a door, touches it lightly so it opens. It’s the only room in the ship that hasn’t been changed since then. All the others have been cleaned and the belongings of his loved ones have been moved to his home on Duvis. Duvis being one of the small planets the Resistance calls their own, and definitely the most important for them as all the leaders and most important people all live there. He stares a bit at the dirty room, before shaking his head almost unnoticeable. “No one is allowed in here without getting permission, which you’ll probably not get, so don’t fucking go in here, or I’ll leave you on the first and the best space rock I’m able to find, and I won’t look back even once,” he continues, not even caring how big of a jerk it makes him sound like.

This is his place, and the only place he has left where he can allow the memories to stay. Outside of there the earlier crew does not exist, only does the four young lads standing in front of him. Inside that door though, Niall wants nothing to do with them.

He watches as the door closes before moving on. He taps the next door and it opens into Ashton’s and Luke’s old room. It hurts to see it this bare, but he doesn’t as much as lift an eyebrow when he looks back at the boys. 

“This is the first room. If you have decided yet how you want to room, then be my guest and put you bags down. If not do so anyway. It even gives _me_ a sore back just looking at you,” he mutters, almost annoyed with how much crap they’re carrying around.

This was all a bad idea. He’s not ready to share his home with someone new yet, and they knew that when they informed Niall they had a new assignment for him and that they had already found him a new crew for him. Fuck ‘em all! More than once this last year he had thought about giving a shit on the Resistance and just leave and live by his own on some unknown, insignificant planet where he doesn’t have to hear anything from either the Resistance or the Order ever again.

The only thing keeping him from doing so is that then it would all be wasted. Their lives wouldn’t have meant a thing if he does that.

Niall sees how the boys looks at each other before two of them, one with blue eyes and brown hair and the other brown eyes and black hair, put their bags down on the floor before they move on to the next room where the last two of them get rid of their bags.

They follow him obedient as he continues the tour. It might be that he doesn’t like the idea of sharing this with anyone, but at least they’re quiet for now. _Hopefully they stay that way,_ he thinks as he shows them first the bathroom, then the kitchen, before moving onto the part of the ship that’s a bit more exciting.

First the place where five small capsule ships are build into the side of Conscience. He explains how these small ships is their way of getting away from Conscience when needed to. It’s both a last escape but also a way to easier get access to their enemies as the capsule ships quite easily latch on and of his ship. He also tells them that they’ll get some time to get the smaller ships to know before they’ll even think of beginning their mission.

After that he shows them the armoury then the cells at the bottom of the ship where they are able to keep prisoners if needed to.

“Why is there blood in there?” the curly haired lad asks, looking a bit lost.

“I had to get rid of some bodies around a year ago. Didn’t want them near me or my dead crew. I guess no one thought of cleaning down here,” he smirks almost feeling hopeful that the lad will give up before they’re leaving. He sees how the lad shivers a bit, looking away from the blood filled cells. “Getting scared, _boy_?”

“No, Sir,” he mutters.

“Good. I don’t need cowards for anything.”

They don’t stay there after that, there isn’t a reason to, and Niall isn’t a mean person, not really, so he moves on to the next stop. When they’re at the machinery he explains a bit how to fix the most common problems, and that if something goes totally wrong in the commando central, then it’s down here you go to fix that problem.

It’s probably stupid of him, using all this time on explaining things they without a doubt already know, because even though Niall isn’t quite happy with the Resistance at the moment, then he does know they wouldn’t send him untrained soldiers. They know how to work a ship, know how to fix problems like another technician and if they have just one third of the training Niall got as he grew up, then they know the basic of medicine too. It’s just that he doesn’t _know_ anything about them. For all he knows they could have walked over here by accident without any training at all, and Niall will rather explain everything ten times than end up with another dead crew.

He walks back to the commando, still with the four boys following him closely. He stops in the middle of the room, and waits until they’re lined up in front of him. Curly hair, blue eyes, tanned skin and buff body.

“I want your names. The rest will come as we go,” he says mildly, knowing that when they’re all still here by now, then they won’t leave before it’s too late anyway, and it’s better to keep a friendly tone towards the ones you’re supposed to use weeks, probably more like months, with to complete a mission, and if it goes well then maybe even years, than to be the stupid brat no one likes or wants to protect.

When no one says a thing he looks at curly hair with a raised eye brow and hums satisfied when he hears a, “Harry Styles, Sir,” coming from the lad. Louis Tomlinson, then Zayn Malik and lastly Liam Payne. Niall has heard of some of them before. Tomlinson is said to be a fucking great pilot and Malik actually _is_ a smartarse technician. The two other ring bells as well, but he can’t seem to remember where he heard of them or what was being said, but something tells him that these _´boys´_ aren’t as inexperienced as he might has thought when he first saw them. At least not on paper. He’ll just have to wait and see how good they are in an emergency.

“We’re leaving first thing in the morning. Before that I expect for you all to be unpacked and ready. Our provisions will be here later tonight, and I want them packed away too. When that’s done, go get a good night’s sleep. It might be the last one you’ll get for a while.”

He leaves them at it then. Walks back to his room and locks himself in there without coming out even once, until an old fashioned alarm begins ringing, telling him that it’s time to leave. He doesn’t sleep all night even though he knows he should and that he’ll need the energy for later, but whatever. He just can’t. Instead he sits there with his little black knife if his hands, thinking about how relieved it used to make him. Just a little cut added to the ones he already got. He doesn’t do it though, has used too many months on convincing himself that it isn’t the solution.

 The ship is quiet and he expects everyone to still be asleep, but when he walks into the first room, it’s empty and so is the second. Just for a moment he thinks _this is it, they left,_ but then he hears the faint sound of laughter and he knows they’re still here.

And they are. All four of them waiting nicely on him in the commando, talking and laughing quietly with each other, as none of them have seen him stand there yet. When they do though, they shut up totally and look at him expectantly.

“Let’s get this thing in the air,” he mutters and lets himself fall down in the only seat left back, which just also happens to be his.

Maybe they aren’t as bad as he thought they’d be.

 Niall holds his hand over the scanner that turns on the ship making the engineer purr lowly. He begins tapping some buttons until the four scanners at the other seats begins blinking to get the attention of the four boys sitting there. “Hold your hands over it,” he explains when no one moves a muscle. “In case I won’t be here for whatever reason, one of you will then be able to turn on the ship. It’s like a key, but a key only people I choose will be able to use. Let’s say I’m killed by the enemy or they chop of my hand so they can steal the ship, what do you think would happen?”

“Nothing would happen, Captain,” Zayn answers immediately. “The system would only work as long as your hand was still connected to your body, because the scanner can sense whether or not you still have a pulse. They wouldn’t be able to do anything with the ship.”

“Correct, and neither would any of you unless you have the key too, so c’mon let her get to know you,” he says with a smirk and nods toward the scanners.

He watches as the four boys let their hands rest on the scanners and as they all jerk in surprise as the electric sparks go through their bodies. It’s nothing that hurts, but if you aren’t prepared then you certainly will be surprised. One by one the scanners turn green. Once again he holds his hand over the scanner to approve that they should have the right to the ship.

Niall then turn the ship off again, just to be sure everything went like it should. With a nod toward Liam he waits until the boy once again holds his hand over the scanner; this time resulting in the low purr when the ship blinks to life.

“What’s her name, Sir?” Liam asks with a glimpse in his eyes, like he can’t wait for the adventure to happen. Nothing but a foolish boy, that’s what he is.

“I’ve already told you that my ship is called the Conscience,” Niall says with a frown. “Did you not listen to a word I had to say?”

“No...”

“I think Liam meant to ask what the operation system is called? You never told us, and she hasn’t introduced herself,” Zayn interrupts patiently.

“Oh. It isn’t called anything, because it isn’t a thing here. I don’t understand the need to all those new and modern widgets. What’s the point in any of us being here if the ship is smarter than we are? No gentlemen, here on the Conscience we do it the old way by manually controlling my lady. Trust me, it’s way more satisfying.”

“And now we know why you put ‘raving’ in the front of her name, because that’s just raving mad,” Zayn mutters, with a frown that’s even bigger than Niall’s were. Niall almost misses it, but he’s happy he didn’t because he can’t help but snort of in a laugh by his words. If he only knew, but maybe it’s for the better that he doesn’t.

They only sit in silence for a couple of seconds before Niall feels the need to remind them of what they’re going into and who exactly is in charge on this trip.

“In principle it only takes one man to fly her, remember that before you decide to do something stupid. I’ve flown her home by myself before, and I won’t hesitate to do so again if you all turns out to be some brats I can’t work with,” he threats not even looking at any of them, as he gets ready to get her in the air.

He doesn’t get an answer but he didn’t really expect to either. Good soldiers know when to stand up for themselves and when to keep quiet. They don’t know each other right now, and as the captain Niall has the right to let them know how things work on his ship. After all it is his ship and if everything goes wrong, then he’ll always be able to find a new crew. These aren’t the first members being on here; can’t even brag about being the second.

 “With that said, she’s mine in the day unless I need to be elsewhere which in case that happen one of you will take over. I’ve heard you’re some of a pilot, Tomlinson. I think you’d be the one who’d end up taking over in that case. Each night you’ll all switch to be on watch. Questions?”

Niall concentrates on the world in front of him, as the ship slowly begins moving. When he’s far enough away from everything, he increases the speed and the planet beneath them quickly disappears.

Liam clears his throat before speaking. “We still don’t know what exactly we’re here for? I mean, what is the mission even?”

“You don’t know?” Niall asks dismayed. He had thought the Resistance at least would tell them what they were up against before sending them aboard with Niall. All four of them shake their heads, looking at Niall curiously.

Now that they are away from the city, Niall won’t have to concentrate just as much on the flying, so it doesn’t bother him all that much when he begins telling them about their mission. He first of all tells them how the spaceship Coyote disappeared completely a couple of days ago along with the Captain, Jesy Nelson, and her crew consisting of Perrie Edwards, Jade Thirlwall and Leigh-Anne Pinnock. He tells them how the Resistance suspect that the girls are being held hostage by the Order, and now it’s their job to get the girls from Coyote home safely. Or, in the worst case scenario, get their bodies with them home so they can get the funeral they deserve.

“The girls from Coyote? But that’s like one of the most respected crews out there!” Harry almost gasps in surprise once Niall’s done talking. “Through all of our training we heard of Coyote so many times. The only ship getting mentioned more was yours, Niall.” It’s kind of cute how there’s almost Christmas lights in Harry’s eyes as he talks, but Niall almost doesn’t even notice over the irritation about the fact that his ship is being used for bragging when the Resistance trains new soldiers.

“It’s either Captain or Sir to you, Styles!” he snaps, not even bothered by Harry using his name, but more using it like an excuse to let go of some of his irritation.

Harry cowers a little and looks like he’s just about to agree just to come back on Niall’s good side, but he doesn’t get to do so before Louis interrupts him sharply. “Don’t be a prick, _Sir._ It might be that you’re able to fly this thing home by yourself, but you’ll never be able to get the Coyote home with you without us there to help you, because if that had been the case then we wouldn’t have been here in the first place. I’m sick and tired of listening to you being a right brat!”

Niall turns his chair just enough for him to be looking right at Louis when he with a smirk says, “In that case, Mr. Tomlinson, you’ll probably be thrilled to hear that you’ve just gotten the job of cleaning the cells. I’ve been told they’re quite... bloody, so you’ll probably be able to spend hours down there, away from the bratty prick you’re sick of listening to.” He stares hardly at Louis and Louis just stares back in disbelief, as he quite obviously can’t believe his own ears. “Of you go then,” he says almost mildly and watches as Louis slowly gets to his feet and disappears out of the commando. He can feel the stares of the three others. His tone is sharp when he adds, “If any of you have anything else to say, you’re welcome to join Mr. Tomlinson and clean the cells. I quite like my ship being shiny.”

It doesn’t come off as a surprise when no one says a word to defend Louis, nor does it surprise him when they one by one disappears out of the commando, leaving him alone to what he’s doing.

He’s alone for hours, doesn’t even see a glimpse of any of his crewmembers, but it doesn’t really bother him as he hums quietly for himself as he does what he has always done best. It’s calming in a way he had almost forgotten about in the year he didn’t fly, and as he sits there watching the galaxy drift by, he doesn’t understand how he survived so long without it.

Just around eight hours after he send Louis down to the cells he hears faint footsteps getting closer and closer by the second. The person behind him is quiet, but Niall somehow still knows that it’s a dirty Louis he will find standing there once he turns around.

“Come sit,” he says not even bothering to look back at him.

Only seconds later there’s a person in the chair beside him. Louis chooses to still not say a word, and when Niall finally takes a look at him, he understands why. The boy is dirty as fuck and he looks like someone who’s about to fall asleep at any moment now, but at the same time as his eyes are big from horror. Niall feels bad, because there’s no one to blame for that expression on Louis’ face but him, and all that because Louis, as the only one, told him the truth.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he then says, nodding towards the dark in front of them. It is and he has always thought it was, because it isn’t only darkness out there. Everywhere there’re these small and pretty lights, that if you get close enough could burn you to dead, and it’s just so big. Niall could spend his whole life exploring the universe, and he probably will too, but he still wouldn’t be able to cover it all, and that fascinates him more than he can ever describe.

“Yeah,” Louis agrees hoarsely.

For a while none of them says anything, both just watching the space pass by. At some point he feels Louis’ foot hit his thigh and when he looks over the boy is half sitting half laying on the chair, using the armrest as a pillow. Little snores leave him and Niall find him almost magical in that moment. It’s so bloody hard to not keep sending him little glances.

Another hour goes by, before Niall once again can hear footsteps getting closer. He turns his head just enough to see Zayn stand there a little uncomfortable.

“Go to bed, Zayn,” he mutters gently.

“But...”

“Not tonight. I would have shown you all how the system works, so I could sleep in peace but it’ll have to wait till tomorrow. Now go to bed and get some rest, I’ll do just fine. Like I said earlier; I’ve flown this ship by myself before, so I’ll live one night without sleep.”

“Should I carry Lou to bed too?”

“No!” he almost sneers, but immediately regrets it when he sees Zayn take a step back. “I’m sorry. No, let him stay here. You’ll just end up waking him if you begin moving him around. He can sleep here.”

There’s no way Niall is ever going to explain to any of them why he doesn’t want Zayn to take Louis with him, because that would let them know so much more than he’s ready for them to know. The thing is that he’s been lonely as fuck the last year, and having Louis sleeping in the chair beside him, remind him of some good times with his old crew, because Ashton always had this tendency to fall asleep on him when Niall came in here in the morning after Ash had had a nightshift. The boy would refuse to go to bed and instead stay there with Niall, just talking until he was so tired he wasn’t able to keep his eyes open anymore. He’d fall asleep in the exact same chair Louis is now sleeping in.

He doesn’t see but more hear when Zayn leaves them without a word more spoken. He really has to stop being  a right jerk, because if he keeps this up then they’ll leave him by the first change they get, and Louis was right when he said that maybe Niall is able to fly his ship by himself, but he’ll never get the Coyote home safely without them.

The first to get up the next morning is a still sleepy Harry who comes stumbling into the commando. He hesitates a bit before taking a seat in the chair on the other side of Niall. None of them says a word, but it isn’t awkward, not really. In a way Niall kinda find it nice. The little noises Harry makes, yawns cutely and moves around every other second, reminds him that he isn’t alone, even though it feels like it sometimes. 

A little while later Liam comes in too, looking way more awake than Harry did.

“Morning,” he mutters, and takes a place beside Harry.

“Slept well?” Niall asks, deciding that’s a good way to start his whole ‘being nice to the new crew’ project.

“Better than I thought I would,” Liam admits with a little laugh. A little smile shows on Niall’s lips.

“Good,” he mumbles with a little nod.

An hour later, when Zayn still hasn’t shown up, Niall begins to get impatient. He’s tired, his hands is shaking lightly because of the lack of sleep he has gotten the last couple of days. If the boy doesn’t get up soon, Niall will most likely end up joining Louis and take a nap in his chair.

Liam must sense it, because he gets up from his seat and a couple of minutes later he’s pushing a half asleep Zayn into the commando and helps him over to the last chair before gently waking Louis up too. When all four of them are in a different states of awake, but at least awake, Niall begins explaining how his baby works. She isn’t a hard machine to work with, and Niall personally could probably fly her with closed eyes, but he still prefers to be hundred percent sure they all know how fly her without causing any damage. He also explains the navigation-system and how they just have to follow the coordinates on it.

“So... who wants to try first?” he asks when he’s totally sure he has explained each and every little thing at least once. Some of the things twice, just to be totally sure they understood. Not that he doesn’t think they did the first time; it’s just that this ship is his baby, and if he has anything to say, then she’s going to be in a perfect condition the day he dies, whether that’s being tomorrow or sixty years from now.

Louis, who looked half dead by the time Niall started but a lot more awake now, excited raises his hand with a big smile on his lips and with a glimpse in his eyes. Zayn looks like he doesn’t really care at all and Liam like he wants to raise his hand too, but will let Louis have the first go. The look on Harry’s face though, makes Niall frown. The boy won’t look at him but Niall can still see how his face is in a grimace, and his whole body trembling slightly.

Even though he knows Harry perfectly fine will be able to steer the ship from where he’s sitting now, Niall still gets up from his seat signals for Harry to take a place. Louis pouts a bit but decides not to say anything when Niall gently, but at the same time firmly, helps Harry over in the captain-chair, when he realises that Harry won’t do so by himself. 

Harry just sits there, shaking more and more by the second.

“Mr. Styles, what did I tell you just yesterday that I do not need on my ship?” Niall asks sharply. The three others looks like they want to protest, but Niall just sends them a glare to get them to shut the fuck up.

“C-cowards, Sir,” Harry whispers, concentrating on his shaking hands.

“Are you a coward, Mr. Styles? Do I have any reason to worry?” He takes a grip on Harry’s chin and forces the boy to look him in the eyes. For a short moment, Niall is almost sure Harry is going to begin crying, but then a determined expression takes over the fear and he shakes his head like he means it.

“No, Sir, you got nothing to worry about.”

“Good, then show me that I didn’t make a mistake when I accepted for the four of you to join me. The Conscience is yours for the day, Styles. Better take care of her for me.” He watches as Harry nods, before he at first a little unsure steers the ship, but only seconds later looks so much more confident. Niall then turns his attention toward Louis, who’s still pouting. “Tomlinson, would you be so nice and follow me?”

Louis jerks a little when he hears his name being said, and he looks at Niall suspiciously, but in the end he gets up and follows Niall through the ship till they reaches the hallway with their rooms. Niall ignores his own room and first stops when he comes to the room Louis shares with Zayn. He lightly touches the door so it opens for them and goes in there.

A pang of sorrow hits him when he sees how cosy the two boys have managed to make the room in only one day. It reminds him so much of when two other, very important people to him, roomed in here.

The two single beds that just yesterday stood in each corner of the room is now pushed together in the middle, and Niall can help but frown, a weird feeling stirring in his chest. He’s not sure what exactly that means, besides the quite obvious feeling of him not being very happy about the fact that it seems like the two of them plan on being cuddle-buddies.

“Sit,” he orders, feeling more than a little stupid of the thoughts going on in his head. Louis looking at him weirdly, but he still does as he’s told and take a seat on the edge of the bed.

When Niall kneels on the bed behind the boy, he sees how Louis visible tenses, like he’s afraid Niall has something terrible planned. He doesn’t and he can’t help but quirk a little smile, when he begins rubbing the tension out of Louis shoulders.

It’s surprisingly nice, just sitting there in silence, besides the little moans leaving Louis ever other minute when Niall hits a real sore spot. “Oh, this is good,” Louis mumble almost sleepy once again. Niall doesn’t answer but just continues massaging him with strong and gentle fingers.

Only around half an hour later Louis is slumping back onto Niall, clearly asleep. A soft laugh leaves him as he carefully moves Louis under the covers. He’s just about to get up and find his own bed when Louis in his sleep throws an arm around Niall and with a surprisingly strong grip keeps him in place. Niall’s too tired to begin fighting the grip, so he just lies down and is asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.

¤¤¤

“Captain. Sir. _Niall_!” Someone pushes him carefully in a try to make him up. Niall just mutters something that doesn’t even make any sense in his own head and hides under the covers that someone has put over him at some point doing his sleep. “Niall! Get up; don’t let your baby wait for you.”

“’s Captain to you, Tomson,” Niall mumbles into his pillow, eyes still shut closely to avoid the light in the room. He’s not ready to get up yet.

All of a sudden the warm duvet is gone, and Niall can’t think of doing anything but whine unhappily while he tries to get the duvet back on. A hand grips his wrist and pulls him out of the bed, but since Niall didn’t in a way expect that to happen, he ends up on the floor before he can even figure out what’s going on.

Confused he blinks up at Louis who’s standing in front of him with wide shocked eyes, like he can’t believe what just happened either.

“Shit!” Louis says, and takes a step away from Niall.

“The fuck?” Niall says groggily.

“It’s your turn to take the helm! Zayn looks like someone who’s about to faint from lack of sleep, and you said the ship was yours in the daytime, so get up.”

It takes him all of two seconds to realise that means he has been sleeping for around twenty-four hours, which is more than double of what he has slept the last week. Well shit. Something tells him that he might have needed that, but that doesn’t make him any less surprised to actually being able to sleep that long.

“How much of the time were you sleeping in here too?” he asks thoughtfully.

“Like an hour or two when I fell asleep on you and then the whole night. Why? Does it bother you?”

“No. I’m just surprised I slept so well. Haven’t for a long time.”

The blush on Louis’ skin is more evident than Niall would ever have thought it would be on the tanned skin, not near as pink as Niall would have been, but it’s nice in a way. Unable to stop himself, Niall gets up and without really thinking all that much about it he reaches out and rests his fingers on the warm skin of Louis’ cheek, which just results in the blush becoming a deeper red colour.

Niall quirks a smile before letting his hand fall. “Sit with me in the commando?” he says, but let it sound like a question so Louis knows he doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to be there with Niall, but still, when Niall leaves the room Louis follows him closely.

¤¤¤

“So you already know each other?” Niall asks curiously one afternoon, Harry sitting beside him as the only other one in the commando besides Niall of course.

“Have done in forever. I’ve known Li since we were children, and we decided that we wanted to get trained as soldiers and pilots together. We both wanted to make a difference, you know? We met Louis and Zayn at the academy and we instantly became friends. We got assigned the same ship and Captain when we were done with the training, and have been a crew together ever since.”

“That must be nice. Always having each other close, I mean.”

“It is. I wouldn’t know what to do without them,” Harry whispers, and Niall knows the feeling, except the detail that he actually had to find out what to do without the ones that’s closest to you.

¤¤¤

“Can you fix it?” Liam asks a bit nervously while he keeps fidgeting with his hands. Both he and Niall are looking down at Zayn who’s squeezed down in the small room with all the most important machines in a try to fix whatever problem that went wrong while Liam was steering the ship this morning before Niall got up just to find out they weren’t moving.

He understands why Liam seems so nervous, because Niall hasn’t really been very pleasant to be around since he woke up, especially not when he found out that something was wrong with his baby, but it’s not like he’s going to kill the boy because of it. At least not at the moment. He can’t really say anything about what he’ll do is Zayn can’t fix the problem.

“This is some old crap,” Zayn grumbles. “When did you last update her? 2398?”

“Don’t insult her! Just because she’s an old lady, doesn’t make her worth any less. And no, to your fact she’s a model 2405, and was last updated around five years ago,” Niall says offended.

“I wasn’t even born back then! What are you doing with this old junk?” Zayn says shocked.

“She was cheep when I needed a ship and I didn’t have a lot of money. Then I kinda fell in love with her, and can’t get myself to get something newer. It’s not like I need to either. She’s more than perfect. Just fix her!” It’s a lie, but they don’t have to know that. Don’t have to know why the ship really means that much to him, and why he can’t let it go even though he knows that there’s more impressive ships out there than this one.

Twenty minutes, and curse words enough to even make Niall impressed, later Zayn happily says, “Done! And I’m telling you, the first chance I get to improve this system I’ll take. You can’t expect me to work with this!”

Niall helps Zayn up from the little space and pulls him into a hug. “Just admit that you love her too,” he laughs, when he lets go of the other boy.

“She’s old,” Zayn says with a grimace, but also with a fond little smile on his lips. Niall just laughs again as he makes his way to the commando. They have a lot of light-years to catch up on.

¤¤¤

“I’m so tired,” Louis whines when Niall comes to take over the morning after Louis’ nightshift.

“Then go to bed,” Niall laughs fondly, watching as Louis shifts in his chair so he can place his feet in Niall’s lap.

“Don’t wanna,” he mutters, letting his head rest on the back of his chair.

“Of course you don’t.”

He’s sleeping before Niall can count to three.

¤¤¤

“I don’t get it. Why did Harry even want to be a soldier? It doesn’t really seem like he enjoys any of it.”

“He didn’t. Not really,” Liam says with a shake of his head. Niall looks at him curiously, waiting for him to continue. “Most of all, Harry just wanted to make a difference. Both of our families were killed when we were fourteen by the Order. What both of us probably really wanted was revenge and we thought we could get that if we became soldiers. As it turned out the whole soldier thing wasn’t really Harry’s thing at all. He’s too clumsy and way too goodhearted to really ever be good at it, so when they let us choose what we wanted to work further on, Harry chose medicine, because in that way he’d still be able to do _something._

So he’s a standard soldier but is more trained to be a healer, just like Zayn has his knowledge of machines as a technician, and Louis is a talented pilot.”

“What about you then? What did you chose to work on at the academy?”

“Space fighter to your service, Sir,” Liam laughs and salutes at Niall.

 “So as the only one you actually liked the soldier training?” Niall asks, not really knowing if that’s something good or something bad. It does give his crew a lot of different abilities, but he’ll also need soldiers when they reach their destination.

“Oh no. Louis quite liked it too. He just has the fancy title of being a space fighter _pilot._ And you? What did you chose when you went there?”

“I never did. In fact I’ve never even been at the academy,” Niall admits, nods toward Liam before taking the run and hides in his room for the night.

¤¤¤

Sometimes Niall can’t help but think about how his life would have turned out if he had taken some different decisions; if his world hadn’t crashed around him so many times. He wonders how it would have felt like to still have a family, and he wonders what it would have been like if he hadn’t left everything he knew behind.

He has a lot of bad days, a lot more than he has good days, and he misses the time where his old crew was there to cheer him up when everything seemed so dark. They aren’t here anymore though, and Niall is alone with his misery. He knows that there’re four perfectly nice people aboard with him, who probably would be thrilled to give their best to help him, but Niall just isn’t ready to share every terrible detail of his life with them yet.

For someone being so young Niall has done a lot of stupid shit over the years; the scars on his body only showing a tiny bit of what he had done to it and what he has put it through.

The bad decisions usually come with the bad thoughts and the bad days.

Like a month after his crew died, he decided it’d be absolutely hilarious to pick up a fight with a guy twice as big as himself while he was dead drunk and still healing. To say he had been a bit more bruised up once he was done would have been the understatement of the century. He realised after, that it probably hadn’t been one of his better moves.

The problem with these _moods_ is that when they come over him it isn’t always because he isn’t able to think rationally; most of the time he more than just knows how bad of an idea something is, but it’s like a itch you just have to do something about, because if you don’t it’ll drive you absolutely insane. Like the longer you go without scratching, the bigger the desire to do exactly that.

Niall’s never really been any good at not scratching back.

¤¤¤

Niall looks up from where the old book is placed in his lap, when the door into his room opens, and Harry peeks in.

“What’s wrong?” he asks with a sigh, when Harry doesn’t say anything, but just stands there looking uncomfortable and a little scared.

“I-I had a nightmare. Can I c-come in?” he sniffs.

For a second Niall just looks at him surprised. First of all because of the nightmare, and second of all because Harry chose to come to _Niall_ of all people when he woke up almost crying because of it. He then nods thoughtfully, and watches as Harry stumbles into the room and over to Niall’s bed. He almost falls into Niall’s arms before Niall can even do as much as putting the book away.

Harry doesn’t seem to mind the book that’s squeezed between them though, because he just rests his head on Niall’s chest with a low sigh.

“Uh,” Niall says stupidly, not really knowing what to do with himself. In the end he carefully lets his fingers run down Harry’s spine in a soothing motion. “Want to tell me about it?” he asks unsure.

It takes a while, where the only thing Niall is able to hear is the soft sniffling coming from Harry, but then slowly begins explaining. “It’s the same every night. Me and Liam locked away inside a small room, just holding each other close as we hear the screams and cries from our family as they’re killed by the Order. When we finally got out there was blood everywhere. Blood and dead bodies,” he whispers sorrowfully.

“Liam said you guys were only fourteen. What did you do after it happened?” he asks more curious than he’d like to admit.

“A friend of our families took us in until we were both fifteen and old enough to go to the academy.”

He’s silent for so long that Niall thinks he must have fallen asleep, but then a little voice whispers, “Do you think I’m a coward now you know of the nightmares?”

“No. I believe you’re the bravest man onboard.”

It’s with a smile on his lips that Harry nods of to dreamland, and if his face is anything to go by, then there’s no nightmares this time. The book is forgotten, and Niall uses the whole night to just look at Harry’s face while he sleeps soundly.

¤¤¤

He’s on his way to the bathroom, in a serious need of a shower, when he passes by the kitchen. A soft humming makes him stop dead in his tracks, and he peeks inside and sees Louis almost dancing around the kitchen to his own melody.

Louis is heating some of their storage of food; porridge because that’s how original the Resistance are when it comes to sending food with the crews when they go on missions. If Niall’s not totally wrong there’s a couple of protein bars somewhere too, but the main part of their food is crappy and disgusting porridge.  After watching him for a couple of seconds it seems to Niall as if Louis has forgotten everything about the pot on the stove, because it smells a little burned.

Niall almost laughs out loud, when it seems like Louis finally remembers the food, because the older boy stops humming and almost runs over to the stove. The pout on his face when he looks down into the pot, can be described as nothing but absolutely and totally cute. Niall manages to stop the laugh from leaving him though, and can continue to watch Louis without the other knowing so.

He watches as Louis throws the food out and starts over, this time with a concentrated frown on his face, as he not even once through the process stops staring at the pot. A small smile quirks on his lips as Louis’ whole face lights up when he this time manages not to burn the food. He disappears into the bathroom before Louis can turn around and catch him in being creepy as hell.

¤¤¤

They’re three weeks into their journey when Niall casts a look at the navigation-system and gets some of a surprise. They’re in the Milky Way, which also means they’re as close to Earth as Niall has ever been. He has always been fascinated with the planet the humans supposedly comes from, and he has heard a lot of stories from people who has taken the trip all the way there, just so they would be able to say they had been where not many had been before them.

If the stories are true, then only a couple of hundred years ago, the humans actually lived on the planet, but slowly killed it until they had to find a way to get away from there if they didn’t want to die along with the planet. It had been a beautiful planet, and even today it’s said to be some of a sight.

Everything in him is itching to forget about his orders and instead visit the planet. Before he can do something stupid – like actually giving a shit about the four girls that needs them – he smashes the siren that let the others know he needs them in the commando.

All four of them comes running into the commando only seconds later, looking ready for battle, because something serious must be wrong since Niall, for the first time since they got there, actually pushed the button.

The only thing they find though is a shaking Niall. “I need one of you to take over,” he whispers. Liam is immediately in his seat and Louis is kneeling in front of Niall with a worried expression.

“What’s wrong? Niall?”

“I have this... history of doing stupid things,” he chokes out, almost laughing. “It itches so badly.”

“Stupid things? What kind of stupid things, Niall? Please tell me you don’t hurt yourself.”

“All kind of stupid things. If it falls into the category of stupid, I’ve probably already done it, or are going to sooner or later. And have I ever hurt myself? More than you’d like to know.”

A laugh that sounds almost crazy turns into Niall gasping for air, but without really breathing at all. Panic floats through him in a way he knows way too well for it to be healthy. A feeling he has had almost constantly the last year. He should have told the Resistance no. Told them that he wasn’t ready, that he’d just end up fucking the whole mission up, but of course he had been stupid as always and accepted it without any objections.  

His eyes fall shut; the feeling of dizziness beginning to settle in, but he still just can’t _breathe_.

A loud smack drags him back to reality as he feels the pain in his cheek right before lips crashes against his own. His eyes flutter open in surprise and he looks directly into a pair of blue eyes. Louis dominates the kiss in a way that makes sure Niall can’t do anything but let it happen. He’s not sure he’d like to stop it even if he possibly could though, because it keeps him grounded in a way he hasn’t felt for a long time.

Cold fingers find his cheeks and for a moment is hurts a bit when Louis’ fingers touch his sore, warm skin that was slapped just seconds ago, but then the cold makes it feel numb and Niall forgets all about it. The only thing he’s really able to remember is how Louis is still kissing him harshly and yet so gently.

He’s breathless once again when Louis finally pulls back, but in a good way this time.

“Okay?” Louis asks cautiously, looking a bit unsure if he’s in problems.

“Perfect,” Niall says dreamingly.

“Good. Now tell me what the problem is. What kind of stupid things is it exactly you feel like doing right now?”

“We’re in the Milky Way,” he says nodding toward the navigation-system to prove that he’s telling the truth. “I’ve always wanted to visit Earth, and we’re so close. I wanna see where we come from, where we lived before it was the Order against the Resistance. I just wanna go so badly,” he whines pathetically, knowing very well how much of a baby he sounds like, but for some reason he can’t seem to care all that much.

“Why haven’t you then? You have a perfectly good ship; you’re young and have time enough. I think you should do it.”

“You don’t understand a thing. None of you do. I can’t just go, because if I do I won’t be able to come back. It’d ruin my probation, and if I first screw that up I’ll be back to be considered an enemy.” The words is being muttered under his breath, in the hope that they won’t hear and won’t ask any questions, but at the same time he knows they deserve to know who they’re travelling with. “There’s a reason I’ve never been at the academy like you have. To be able to go there you have to be at least fifteen and a child of the Resistance. I’ve might have been fifteen, but I’ve never had a drop of blood from the Resistance in me.”

“But... But that’ll mean...” Harry says a little pale all of a sudden. All of them are actually, as they stare at him with wide eyes.

“That I was born into being one of the bastards that killed your family, yes, just as you four were born into being the bastards that killed mine, so don’t look at me like I’m scum,” he spits out angrily.

He pushes Louis away so he can get away from the chair, away from them more like. This didn’t exactly turn out like he had thought it would. He had hoped they’d make the itch go away, not that he’d have to tell them things that’d make them look at him like they just did. Like he’s no longer a friend, or at least an allied, now that they know that he isn’t like them and never has been.

If he had been smart he had gone with his instincts back all those weeks ago and run away the moment he heard that there was a new mission planned for him. He should have taken the chance to get free of both the Resistance and the Order. None of the people have ever done anything good for him anyway; only brought him a bit of happiness before taking it away from him in a heartbeat.

Niall doesn’t even have to push Harry and Zayn away so they don’t stand in the way for him to leave the room, because they move before he can even as much as touch them, and he’ll admit that it hurts more than he ever thought it would.

The tears fight hard to push through, but Niall fights harder to keep them back. The last thing he needs is for them to see him weak when he already feels so alone.

It takes around ten seconds from the moment he storms out of the commando to he hears footsteps trying to catch up, but he won’t have any of it. He walks faster, takes bigger and bigger steps, and hides away in his room before whoever can reach him. When the door is locked safely behind him, a function he hasn’t had to use ever before, he throws himself in the bed with closed eyes, but is only capable to stay still for a short moment before he’s up again frantically looking through the cabinet his clothe is in, along with the hidden drawer in the bottom where he hides the things he doesn’t want anyone to find.

“Niall!” he hears though the locked door, but he doesn’t really pay it any mind, not even as what sounds like several hands begins banging on the door.

The first thing he comes through in the drawer is the little box filled with old pictures of his time in the Order. He knows the first picture is the one of himself along with his dad, mum and brother. All of them are standing in front of the Conscience, Niall looking the proudest he had ever been, because he had just gotten his first ship and he couldn’t be happier. It’s the last picture he has of his family, because not even a week after it was taken they were all killed on a mission for the Order. Niall had only been twelve years old, when he for the first time was all alone in the world.

He had been only fourteen when he took the run and left the Order in favour of seeking out the Resistance where he hadn’t exactly been welcomed with open arms. No, instead he had used a year of his life in a small cell, before the Resistance finally realised that he probably could do them more good than bad since the Order never would let him come back anyway.

They seized his ship and let him work as a crewmember on one of the smaller and not really important at all ships until he worked up their trust enough to finally getting his ship back and become the Captain of it too. The crew hadn’t really been someone he worked well with, and the missions had been stupid, but at least he had gotten some of his freedom back. At least as long as he stayed focused and completed the missions he got, the Resistance would leave him alone the rest of the time.

When he was seventeen he had gotten his first bigger mission, and after that another. Of course Niall had known that inside the Resistance he quite quickly had gotten almost famous for being the youngest Captain seen on the Resistance’s side. Had he still been a part of the Order he could probably have been Captain when he got his first ship, because they don’t care about your age as long as you’re able to fight and fly, and Niall had been both, considered he had grown up in a family of soldiers and pilots.

He had been twenty when his ever changing crews stopped changing and four special boys became family. Here he sits at the age of twenty-four with a new crew he for just a second thought could become family too.

He pushes the box with photos aside and continues digging through the drawer. At one point he gets the little pillbox with the strong pain med for his ruined knee in his hands, and he can’t help but look at it just for a second, in a way wishing he was brave enough to just make an end to it all. It wouldn’t even hurt. He’d just fall asleep and never wake up again. On the other side though, he’s happy that he doesn’t have the courage to do it, because he knows he’d disappoint everyone who has ever cared about him.

The pillbox is being thrown to the side just as everything else, until he finally finds the little black knife, every child from the Order gets when they’re born and is required to carrying around as soon as they’re old enough to understand why. Not because they should use it in self-defence but because they’ll be able to kill themselves with it, in case they know too much and get caught by the Resistance. Niall can’t say exactly say he has tried to kill himself with it before, but it has probably done more harm than most would think a tiny knife like this should be able to do.

When he pulls up the sleeves of the soft uniform he’s wearing, he reveals the hundreds of ugly scars on his arms. The annoying itching finally feels better as he rests the little knife on forearm. He doesn’t get any further though, because the constant banging on the door turns into something that sounds like kicking, and he name is almost being screamed by now.

 _Please tell me you don’t hurt yourself._ That had been Louis’ words, and he had sounded so appalled that Niall almost could convince himself that the boy had cared. _Yeah, well, he didn’t know who you were when he said that,_ Niall thinks bitterly. _They’re still trying to get to you now._

“Shit!” he mutters and throws the knife as far away as possible in the small room. “What do you want from me?” he yells out loud enough for the boys on the other side to be quiet. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

“Please open the door, Niall,” Zayn says pleadingly.

“We’re sorry. Please, Niall, I’m so sorry,” Harry cries out.

And then: “Open the fucking door, Horan, or I’m personally going to kick it down so I can smack that pretty arse of yours,” followed by a horrified, “Louis!” It’s so unexpected that Niall can’t help but snort out loudly.

“Go away,” he says almost softly, not quite ready to face any of them, but in the same moment the words leaves his mouth the banging and kicking starts up again, and that’s when Niall knows that Louis was hundred percent serious when he said he’d kick the door down if Niall didn’t open it.

A sigh leaves him, but he gets up from where he’s sitting on the floor and walks over to the door. For a second he gives his arms a look and considers to cover them up, but decides to just get it done and over with. If they decides to stay here, they’ll find out sooner or later anyway, so why not?

He taps the code to unlock the door, before quickly stepping away, which turns out to be quite a good idea, because if he hadn’t he would have gotten kicked right in the gut by Louis’ foot that comes flying in the exact same moment.

“Fuck,” Louis squeals when his foot doesn’t hit anything and he stumbles a bit before falling head first into Niall’s room. Niall luckily catches the lad before he ends on the floor, which probably could have hurt quite a bit. “Warn a lad before pulling tricks like that, would ya?” he whines quite annoyed, as Niall helps him up on his feet once again.

Niall just shrugs and says, “Your own fault, innit? I didn’t ask you to try ruining my door.”

He doesn’t get an answer though, because Louis has caught sight of Niall’s uncovered arms, and so has the two others. All three of them are staring in disbelief at Niall’s arms like they’ve never seen anything just as horrible before. He suddenly regrets not covering his arms up and self-conscious pulls the sleeves down so the scars are out of sight. They still don’t stop staring at his arms like they’re still able to actually see them.

“Oh no, Niall,” Harry whispers, looking like he’s about to cry. It just makes Niall feel bad, because Harry looks a bit like a baby whom has just gotten their candy stolen or something like that, and it’s just _sad_ to watch.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he orders annoyed. He doesn’t want their pity. He’s hurt and he’s angry with them, and he really doesn’t like how Harry’s expression makes him feel.

“How do you want me to look at you then?”

“Maybe I just don’t want you to look at me.”

“Maybe you’re just an idiot for not realising that we like looking at you,” Zayn says challenging. Niall can’t help but stare at him in pure surprise. That wasn’t really what he had expected to hear at all. What can he possible answer to that? Seriously?

“Shut up,” he ends up grumbling, but he can feel his face heat up and he doesn’t even wanna know just how red his face is.

His words don’t even make any sense anyway. Why in the world would any of them want to and further more _like_ to look at him? He’s just Niall, and not even five minutes ago they looked at him like he was scum.

None of them gives him an answer, and instead Harry steps closer until he’s standing right in front of Niall. He gently takes a grip on Niall’s arms almost like he’s afraid it’ll hurt him if he touches more firmly, and pulls Niall’s sleeves up once again so he can get a look at the scars.

Niall doesn’t fight him in it, doesn’t really see the point in doing so, since they already knows the scars are there. Harry inspects Niall’s arms closely, but seems somewhat happy when he finally let go. Niall knows why too. None of the scars are new, the newest around eight months old.

It’s first then Niall notices that Louis and Zayn has moved closer into his room, and now Zayn is standing in the corner of the room where Niall threw the knife, with a sorrowful expression on his face. “You were going to cut again, weren’t you?”

With a little shake of his head, he smoothly says, “No.” The lie comes so easily that it’s almost scary and he sound so honest that just for a second it seems like they actually believe him.

“Do you have other sharp objects in here?” Louis asks, already looking through the room.

Niall doesn’t answer, but just let him look all he wants. He could tell him about the big knife under his pillow, the three smaller ones hidden behind the old books on his bookshelf or even the bottle of pills in his drawer, but what’s the point really? If he really wants to kill himself or hurt himself, he has a whole armoury filled with all kinds of weapons, he could fly his ship into a meteor or he could just fuck the mission up once they get to their destination and let someone do the job for him. He could hand himself over to the Order, or he could betray the Resistance and hand himself over to them. There’s so many options that a couple of knives hidden in his rooms don’t really mean all that much.  

With Harry and Zayn’s help Louis manages to find all sharp objects plus the pills in the secret drawer. They only briefly look through the rest of the drawer, but it still makes Niall want to protest. He does when Louis hands the pills over to Harry who hides them away in his pocket.

“You can’t take those. They’re just pain meds, and I need them for my knee. Fucked it up a long time ago, and trust me you don’t wanna listen to me whine if I can’t take them.”

“If you need one you can come to Harry and he’ll give you one. You’re not keeping them,” Louis says stubbornly. “He’s a medic for a reason.”

“Yes, to take care of us if we’re hurt, not to keep track of something that has nothing to do with him,” Niall mutters annoyed. They’re his pills. Why don’t they understand that he wouldn’t be able to do anything bad like kill himself with them anyway?

“It had something to do with him the second we found out just how hurt you are.”

¤¤¤

For four days the other boys have been on “Niall watch”, making sure to never leave him alone for more than a second a time. The worst is that they think he doesn’t notice how he’s never fucking alone anymore. Not even at night they leave him alone. No either they find some stupid excuse for him to sleep with one of them or Harry comes to his room with a pout saying he had a nightmare and that he doesn’t want to be alone.

It’s suffocating, but if it gives them a moment of rest to know where he is and what he’s doing all the time, then so be it. At one point or another they’ll realise that he isn’t going to do anything stupid.

He’s tired though; hasn’t really slept at all since that day, and not because he doesn’t want to, but because he for some reason just seems to not being able to. His knee hurts like a bitch too, but he doesn’t want to ask Harry for a pill, just to see his suspicious look when he gives him one. Hell no, then he’ll rather survive with a little pain... or much pain, but whatever. It’s not like he’s dying from it and he has survived before without the painkillers, and he can do so again. It’s not like they’re something he has been taking like he should have either; the prescription says for him to take a couple of pills every day, whereas Niall has just been taking one every time the pain simply became too much.

“Isn’t it Zayn’s turn?” he asks without glancing to where Harry is half asleep in the seat beside him. The boy had the nightshift this time and by now looks a bit like a zombie.

“To what?” Harry says, jerking a bit in surprise, by Niall willingly speaking to him for the first time in days.

“Make sure I don’t cut or kill myself, or whatever else you lot think I’m going to do if you leave me alone, even with the fact that I’ve been alone for almost eight months without doing any of it.”

“You would have if we hadn’t stopped you,” he just says gently.

“I wouldn’t even have thought about it if you hadn’t been some arseholes.”

Niall still doesn’t look at him, but he can still see from the corner of his eye how Harry looks like Niall just slapped him. “I’m sorry. But still, isn’t it Zayn’s turn?”

“Said something about some machines needing to be taken care of,” Harry pouts.

“And the others? Don’t seem very fair to let it fall on you. You need to sleep,” he says gently, because it’s very possible that he’s kinda annoyed with all of them, but he still wants them to take care of themselves even though he doesn’t really do so himself, and Harry needs to sleep  just like the three others do.

The blush on Harry’s face is evident, when Niall finally turns his head towards him when Harry doesn’t give him an answer. “I just... I offered to stay with you. Wanted to talk to you about something anyway.” Niall looks at him curiously and silently encourage him to continue. “It’s about your pills... Like, I read up on them, because they weren’t some I’ve seen before, you know, and I wanted to know the dosage and things in case you needed them. Why haven’t you asked for any yet? It’s strong painkillers and the dosage still says two to three pills every day to keep the pain down. For all I know you should either be screaming or crying because of pain right now.”

Maybe he should be. If this had been ten years ago, then he might have done exactly that, but truth be told he has survived worse than an aching knee. So he just shrugs like it doesn’t really matter, making Harry frown in the process.

“We’re not doing this to spite you, you know that right? We’re just trying to take care of you. That’s what family do for each other.”

“But we’re not family,” Niall mumble so low that he almost thinks Harry doesn’t hear, but he’s proved wrong when Harry whispers, “You’re a part of my family no matter whether or not I’m a part of yours, and like I said, family take care of each other.”

Niall doesn’t answer, but he can’t help the faint blush to turn up on his cheeks and the warm feeling inside. He likes the idea of being important enough for Harry to consider him as a part of his family, and at the same time he feels kind of bad, because he has done nothing to deserve the younger boy looking at him like that.

He has been nothing but a jerk ever since they came here, and he knows so himself.

“And don’t try convince yourself that you don’t deserve it, because you do,” Harry says seriously. It’s freaky how it almost seems like he can read Niall’s thoughts.

“Why?”

“It’s all the little things.”

¤¤¤

Harry begins to regularly give him one pill three times a day, each time making sure that Niall actually swallows the pill and doesn’t spit it out or save them for a later not quite as good purpose, which also means that Niall is constantly tired and sleeps a lot more than he’d normally do without eating the pills like he’s supposed to do.

This also means that the other boys takes over a big part of his time behind the steer, because Niall is about to nod of almost as soon as the pills kicks in, and none of them trust him to actually be able to stay awake, which is probably very reasonable from their side, because Niall’s not sure he’d be able to either. That doesn’t mean he’s happy with this arrangement though, because with only a few hours flying his ship he quickly becomes restless and feels useless for not being able to sit a full day without drifting off to sleep.

Which is also why he grumbles irritated when Harry, only two hours into him taking over for Zayn, comes with a glass of water and a pill in his hands. “Go away. I don’t want it.”

“It’s only until you’re used to actually taking you dose again, Niall. The need to sleep will get better as soon as your body is adjudging. Now take the pill, and I’ll sit with you so you can keep flying till it becomes too much.”

Niall pretends not to hear a word he just said and ignores it when Harry holds out the glass and the pill for him to take. His knee doesn’t even hurt right now, so it’d just be stupid to take the pill when there’s no reason to.  As he sees it, if he doesn’t take the pill now, then there’ll be one more before he’ll have to get a new bottle. The pills aren’t exactly the easiest to get hands on and not some he’s just be able to find everywhere.

The Resistance’s medics use them for hurt soldiers, but Niall has never been important enough for them, being the child of the Order he is, for him to be able to get the pills through them. No if he wants to get some new, he has to find a way to get in contact with some old friends of his family, so they can get the pills for him, but that isn’t exactly easy, because they’re still a part of the Order and only keeps helping him because of his parents.

“C’mon Niall, do we really have to do this again?” Harry groans, because no, this isn’t exactly the first time he has given Harry a hard time when it comes to the pills. Actually now that he thinks about it, it’s more like every time he sees Harry with a pill in his hand.

“I don’t need one,” Niall insists promptly, the exact same words he uses every time he tries to talk Harry out of giving him one.

“Do I have to get Liam again?”

The sigh is evident in Harry’s voice, and he’s already about to turn around without getting an answer, but Niall becomes pale and snatches the pill and swallows it before Harry can even react, because there’s no fucking way he’s going to relive yesterday’s episode where Niall had been stupid enough to refuse the pill for so long that Harry had gotten Liam to hold him while he forced the pill into Niall’s mouth. He had been so upset with them that Liam had had to keep his grip in him until he fell asleep to not end up getting punched in the face.

The shocked expression on Harry’s face almost makes Niall want to laugh, if he wasn’t annoyed with the boy for getting him to eat the pill. He therefore also only sends Harry a nasty look when he’s being offered the glass with water. He’s no fucking baby! Like he needs water to swallow a stupid pill!

It takes ten minutes at the top before his eyes begins falling shut. He yawns cutely and uses one of his hands to rub his eyes in a try to stay awake, but has to realise his defeat when Harry’s able to take over the steer without him noticing at first.

“If you go take your nap in Louis and Zayn’s room, I’m sure there’ll be a lot of cuddles,” Harry whispers sweetly, just as Louis enters the commando.

As soon as the older boy sees how close Niall is to be sleeping standing, he laughs softly and only gets a softly murmured protest when he picks the blonde up and carries him to his room.

“No,” Niall whines when he sees that Louis carried him to his own room. Harry promised he’d be cuddled and he won’t if he sleeps in here. “Cuddles!”

“What?” Louis asks amused, clearly haven’t heard Harry’s promise of cuddles. He tries to put Niall down in his bed, but Niall is having none of it, tightly keeping his grip in Louis.

“Your room,” Niall manages to demand even though he’s more asleep by now than awake.

He has no idea whether or not Louis does as asked, because he’s sleeping soundly before Niall can do as much as blink again in a try to stay awake.

¤¤¤

When Niall wakes up he’s being squeezed by a very much sleeping and very cuddly Zayn, who holds him in his arms closely. Niall doesn’t really mind. Even though he can’t even move an inch, it feels nice being held like this. He’s so warm and cosy, and if it wasn’t because of a certain lady waiting for him, he’d probably be able to lay here in Zayn’s arms for hours.

He gently tries to slip out from the bed, but he doesn’t get very long before Zayn’s grip in him tightens and he mutters something Niall can’t really hear nor find any sense in.

“I need to get up, Zayn,” he whispers, trying once again to get free, but no matter what he does Zayn won’t let him go.

“No, stay here. So warm,” Zayn says sleepy, but doesn’t seem to actually be able to open his eyes. It might be understandable since Zayn did have the nightshift and since he’s definitely the one who sleeps the most. Niall probably shouldn’t be surprised at all, and truth be told he isn’t really either.

“But...”

“They’re three smart lads; they’ll survive without you today. Sleep,” he commands, and since Zayn seems to insist on using him as a pillow, he doesn’t really get much of a choice in the matter, so he stops fighting and enjoys being able to just lay there for a bit, before he eventually falls right back into dreamland.

¤¤¤

When he wakes up for the third time that day, it isn’t nearly as pleasant as the two first times, as a loud siren warns bad news. He’s out of the bed, and has pushed Zayn out too, before two seconds has passed by.

“Shit!” Zayn curses, as he lands on the floor with a loud bump. “What is happening?”

“I hope you remember your training, Malik. Things are about to happen,” Niall grins cheekily. He quickly slips on his uniform, when he realises that he’s only wearing a t-shirt and a pair of boxers. There’s no way he’s fighting anything in his underwear.

Niall doesn’t even know what’s happening yet, and still, it’s a long time since he has felt as alive as he does now. His hands are shaking lightly from excitement, and his heart is pumping hard and fast. This is probably one of the things he has missed the most through the year he stood standby; the rush running through him as he knows how quickly a wrong move from his side could cost him his life.

He rushes out of the room with Zayn following as quickly as he can.

“Good afternoon, boys,” he says full of energy. “Can I get an update?” A very pale Harry points out of the windshield of the ship. Niall feels almost disappointed when he sees the threat of meteors coming fast toward them. “That’s all?” The pout on his face is evident as he turns toward Louis. “Aren’t you supposed to be a space fighter pilot? Get going, soldier.”

“But...” Louis begins almost as pale as Harry by now. Niall just raises an eyebrow. Is he supposed to be impressed by this?

“Styles, can you please remind Tomlinson of what I do not need on my ship?” Niall says harshly, while looking at Louis challenging.

“Cowards, Sir,” Harry almost whines out, clearly not enjoying this one bit.

“That’s right. Do I have any cowards on my ship?” His eyes turn from Louis to the three others. Each getting a look that clearly says what he wants to hear right now, and how he expects them to act after giving him their answer.

“No, Captain,” they all answer a bit hesitant.

“Good. Now get going, all of you, no matter what you might believe of me, then I do not fancy dying at the moment, so if you’d please do something about our little problem. We’re getting quite close, if you hadn’t noticed.”

He sounds like a corky little bastard, but it does as he intends as all four of them determined finds their seats and work together like a team. It’s not that he doesn’t believe they were a team before, but he needs them to be able to work together under pressure too.

As he steps back, he watches as Louis takes the commando, giving orders to the other three as he obviously knows best how to avoid the catastrophe. What’s nicest to know though, is that if something happened to him, the stars know he hope that won’t be the case, he’ll know that his crew, or family as Harry says, will be able to get home safely even with problems like this lying ahead of them.

“If I were you, Louis, I’d get the shields up now,” Niall says as a friendly reminder, as he sees how close two meteors is to each other, and knowing his ship as well as he does, he also knows that she won’t be able to totally avoid them with the speed they’re getting closer.

“Which ones?” Louis asks sounding as calm as Niall could expect.

For a second, Niall pretends to be thinking about it then teasingly says, “I’d go for all of them. This is getting bumpy.”

This probably wouldn’t be considered being nice, but Niall enjoys it too much to do something about it, as Louis gives a firm nod, pounding harshly on the keyboard in front of him, still spitting out one command after the other to his crewmates.

Niall stands strong when the whole ship shakes by the pressure on her shields from the two meteors.

“Shit!” Harry whimpers, but he doesn’t cower or lose his concentration on his job.

“C’mon, Styles, aren’t we having fun,” Niall laughs as another meteor makes the whole ship shake strongly. This time he can’t help but take a step forward to keep his balance.

“I’d like to disagree, Sir,” he says palely.

Niall just laughs again, before he finally takes a seat in the middle, so he has better access to the steer in case he’ll need to take over. It’s not like he’s stupid, or evil like Harry probably thinks right now, and he knows that in case of a real catastrophe then he’ll be the one with the biggest chance of getting them out alive. Not because Niall doesn’t believe that Louis is an amazing pilot, but because even though Niall isn’t the oldest of them, he still has more experience than the four of them together, and after all this is _his_ ship and it has been his only constant the last twelve years.

He doesn’t do much really. Adjusts some small things that Louis’ too busy to notice, but other than that, he leaves the older boy the steer, with the knowing he’ll do amazing. In the old books in his room, Niall has read of these things, videogames they were called, used by the humans while they still lived on Earth. As far as he has understood, there were quite a few different kinds. The kind that struck him the most was the ones about space. They literally had games that allowed them to travel through the galaxies without them moving at all. For some reason this reminds him of the pictures he got in his head when he read about the videogames. How Louis and the others are pushing one button after the other, directing the ship to avoid the meteors in their way.

All those gamers in that time would have been so fascinated with how everything is now, just as Niall wishes that he could go back and experience how their lives were like.

A little scream pulls him out of his thoughts and he sees how Harry is holding his hands in front of his eyes, shaking in what Niall guesses is fear, and how the other three aren’t much better, Louis being the only one still with his hands on the control panel.

Out of the windshield he can see probably the biggest space rock he has ever seen. It’s very obviously blocking their way, and surrounding it is hundreds of smaller rocks. There’s absolutely no way the Conscience will be able to avoid them and not even her shields will be strong enough to get through that without suffering from some real damage.

No fucking way in hell he’s going to let a bit of rocks ruin his ship! If she’s ever going to die, it’ll be with honour, not because of some stupid rocks!

With a little crack of his fingers he takes over totally, leaving no control what so ever to any of them as he begins playing his game. He flips the joystick, making the ship turn around so they’re now upside down. A squeal reaches his ears, probably Harry, but he ignores it and concentrates on what he’s doing. He pushes the button that brings out the armoury on the ship. The very explosive armoury he might have to add. As his dad always said; if you can’t avoid it, blow it up so you don’t have to. And as his mum had a tendency to add; the bigger the boom the easier you’ll have access afterwards. Truth be told, Niall has always liked making things explode.

It’s weirdly satisfying in a way he can’t even describe.

The first shot makes Harry scream again, only this time he isn’t the only one as Zayn joins him. It also totally misses the rock he tried to get, but whatever, it hit something.

“Can you please take it down a notch? I’m trying to safe my lady’s life,” he growls, before firing the second shot, this time actually hitting the planned rock.

“We’re all going to die,” Harry wails, still holding his hands in front of his eyes to keep him from facing the reality. Niall just rolls his eyes, and decides not to say anything in return, when Harry is being plain stupid.

Of course he’s not letting them die. For them to die of this the Conscience is going to be ruined and he thought he had just made clear that that wasn’t going to happen on his watch.

 Shot three and four makes an impressive crack and shot five and six ruins the big rock totally. He’s able to pass without any more problems and on the other side it’s as clear of anything as he could expect. He pulls the armoury back, and turns the ship back around. “There you go, ladies. And what a surprise, no one died,” he says, voice dripping of sarcasm. He can’t even begin to tell how disappointed he is in the way things were handled. If he hadn’t been here, they’d all been dead now for sure.

“Fuck,” Louis breathes out, closing his eyes for a second.

“Why did you have to turn the ship around?” Zayn whines unhappily.

Before doing as much as even thinking about answering, he turns off the ship so they’re no longer moving. He gets up from his chair and signals for the others to do the same. He’s silent until they’re lined up in front of him.

“Who would like to tell me what just went wrong here?”

“Quite literally everything,” Liam mutters, looking down to the floor in shame.

“And I’ve never heard a truer answer to that question. Are you all stupid? I understand that the only real pilot here is Tomlinson, but to leave him sailing his own sea when he needs for all of you to be ready and helping, then it’s absolutely unacceptable to even think about taking your hands of the control panel, do you understand me?” he says, followed by three very shameful ‘Yes, Sir’s, before he continues. “This whole situation was handled directly badly, and if it weren’t because I’d seen your diplomas before I saw you, then I’d never have believed after that, that you four actually have went to the academy. Where’s the five years of education in handling an emergency, I know you all have? Did they teach you nothing about reality, or was all you learned taught out of the perspective that you won’t have to face problems like this one? Please tell me if you think I’m being unfair, but you better have a real goddamn good reason for believing so. I’ve never been so disappointed in any crew before.”

The silence that follows is uncomfortable and a bit overwhelming. None of them as much as look in his direction. Maybe he’s being harsh, but his job as Captain isn’t only to give out orders, but to teach his crew what the academy would never be able to teach them; most important that there’s a difference between reality and imagination, and that stories of missions never actually will let you know everything, like how sometimes it isn’t the mission itself that will kill you, but all the little things they’ll have to face to get there.

He turns towards Zayn and finally answers the question that boy asked. “You wanted to know why I turned the ship upside down. When I was six years old, I got to fly a ship for the first time. When I was seven my parents taught me how to make things explode with the ships armoury. They made me do it upside down for months before finally telling me why; if you learn how to hit in the most difficult position, then you’ll never miss in the easiest.

You’re all dismissed. I don’t want to see any of you in here again before you have a good fucking excuse for me to ever trust you with my ship again.”

He watches as they leave the commando, Harry as the last, sending him a look so heartbreaking that he almost falters, but he knows that to get the lesson through, he’ll have to be the stonehearted idiot he was when they first came here. It’s good he has a hell of a lot of practice in being just that, because Harry’s big hurt eyes literally makes him feel softer than he’d like to ever admit out loud. He really hopes they’ll crack before he does.

Unfortunately he has this feeling he won’t be able to keep it up long.

¤¤¤

 “Niall?” Niall chooses to ignore the small voice trying to get his attention. He knows it’s Harry, and he already knows what the boy want from him too. It’s not going to happen though. Not as the things are right now. “Niall!” he tries a little louder.

“I heard you the first time. No need for yelling,” he says softly. It might be that he hasn’t forgiven any of them yet, even though he has had hours to cool down, but that doesn’t mean there’s any reason to keep sneering at them at every occasion. They have a lot of weeks left before they’ll be able to go separate ways if that what they wish at that point. Right now Niall isn’t really sure what he wants, but there’s still no reason for him to make enemies in the other boys.

“I-I have your pill for you. Will you please take it? It would just be stupid to fuck up everything we’ve worked for now. If you begin skipping the pills there’ll just go longer before you’re used to the dosage,” he says pleadingly.

“No. I have a nightshift to keep awake to. If I take the pill I’ll be asleep in half an hour at the most, and we can’t really afford to not be moving for a whole night.

“We don’t ha...”

“Okay then,” Niall says, turning around in his seat so he can look Harry into the eyes. “If you really insist on doing this, then let’s do it. Give me what I asked for, and I’ll take the pill and let you fly the ship tonight.”

The silence from Harry’s part says it all. He has nothing, and Niall already knew that before he asked. If that had been the case, then Harry would have given his excuse as the first thing when he got here, but he didn’t and Niall isn’t even surprised. He’s not stupid; knows how badly he scolded them and that there probably will go days before any of them muster up enough courage to really try convincing him to let them take over.

“I thought so.  Go to bed, Haz. Sleep tight.”

He watches as Harry’s face fall a little and how he clenches the hand that probably holds the little pill, before he nods in defeat and leaves Niall alone.

As the silence once again take over, Niall turns around and keep his attention on where he’s going for a bit until the surroundings becomes oddly familiar. It can’t be true though, because they shouldn’t be this close for at least another week.

If you asked a totally ordinary person whether they’d be able to recognize one part of the universe over another, then they’d without much doubt say ‘no’, but Niall has spent so much time of his life exploring, along with him always having this deep fascination with space, that he has places he’d be able to tell out from another without any help from any kind of navigation-system.

This is one of those places for him. The dark reddish planet he’s able to see from here, but that really light-years from where they’re now, is called Oprion. The planet is dead and has been for as long as the stories go back, but every once in a while someone tries to land there. No one ever comes back.

Over there is the constellation formed like a ship. According to the legends the ship is supposed to be the ship the humans first used when they needed to get away from Earth, and the only name Niall has ever known for it has been _The Saviour_. He doesn’t really know if the Resistance has another name for it, or if they even know about it at all. After all, this galaxy belongs to the Order, just as the galaxy Duvis is in belongs to the Resistance. Or belong or belong, at the least it’s what the two people think of as home.

So yes he knows this part of the universe, he _really_ knows this part of the universe, but according to both the navigation-system and his own experience then he also knows that this shouldn’t be possible. Then again it’s been quite a few years since he last was here, and when he was he had ended up taking a real big detour because he had been young, scared and hadn’t really known at all how to finds his way to the Resistance. So yeah, it’s very possible that he could have been wrong, but the navigation-system shouldn’t have been. It’s the newest model and it was installed just before they left. There’s no way there should be anything wrong with the device.

Not that it really matter much by now, not really. They’re close now, and Niall knows where to go from here with or without the device.  The only thing it changes is how fast he’ll have to let his crew into the warmth again, because in three days, maybe even less, they’ll be risking their lives in the try to safe four girls Niall can’t even tell whether or not are still alive.

He’s not afraid for himself, hasn’t been for a long time, but at some point along the way be began caring enough for the lives of the four boys on his ship that he wants them to go out of there with success.  Or at least alive, because losing another crew, family, would be devastating.  He’s not sure he’d be able to go from there if he doesn’t have his family with him back home. Hopefully he won’t have to worry about it too much.

The night feels longer than they’d normally do, and when he finally begins hearing sounds indicating that the others slowly is beginning to get up, he’s so fucking tired that he has a hard time concentrating on what he’s doing. Damn fucking pills! And he hasn’t even taken one since last morning. He has to get this shit out of his system before they reach their destination, or else they’re sure to fail before they even get to really begin.

A hesitant little knock makes him realise that he’s been daydreaming for too long.

“Louis Tomlinson here to ask for permission to fly the beautiful lady,” Louis says, sounding cocky as fuck, but at the same time looking unsure enough for Niall to know that out of all of them Louis is probably the one who’s most ashamed about yesterday even though he surely was the one who did best. Not good, but still better than the rest.

“And why should I let you?” Niall asks tiredly, not really feeling ready to argue over it at all. Maybe if he had had a good night’s sleep, but right now he’s ready to just give in and let Louis take over without anymore protest.

“Because you look like someone who’s ready to take a nap, mate. Right now, you’re probably a bigger threat toward the lovely lady than I am, not to add that you’re not treating yourself nicely either, which I thought we talked about when I confiscated your knives. You have to take care of yourself, Ni! How long did you think you’d be able to keep going, honestly?”

“Don’t know. Hoped for a couple of days. Not anything I haven’t done before,” Niall shrugs.

“And that’s your fucking problem; that big attitude of yours. You’ve been doing it since we came here, you realise that right? If shifts between being ‘I don’t bloody care’ and ‘I’m better at this shit that the rest of you so get out of my way’. Let me tell you just how fucking annoying it is,” he rants.

Niall just chuckles. “No need to. You wanna take over? Then fucking do so, but if I were you, I’d keep an eye out for other ships. You’re not home anymore, and in the Order they take patrolling seriously. We’re on their ground now, and in three days time we’ll be where we’re supposed to be.”

“But...”

“I know. You take over, and I’ll inform the rest. Alarm us if you see anyone, and hide the ship. I trust you to know how to do that, and that you won’t fuck it up like yesterday. We can’t afford any more mistakes.”

Louis has a frown on his face, but he nods in acknowledge at Niall’s words when he finds his place in the seat beside Niall’s and take over the steer.  As Niall tries really hard not to begin lecturing all the things he went over when the boys first got here, he watches Louis settle in and with ease do what he does best.

It takes minutes for him to be able to get up and leave the commando, but Louis doesn’t comment on it, which Niall is grateful for. He really doesn’t want to have to explain exactly how little he trust any of them with his ship right now, but he’s happy it’s Louis who sits there and not one of the others. After all, Louis was the only one who at least kept trying, even though he was just as panicked at the rest of them.

Even as he finally gets up to leave, he can’t help but mutter out a, “Take care of her,” before finally, finally, being able to actually leave Louis out of sight. He’s not happy about it, but he manages. At least he thinks he will. Maybe just hopes, but whatever!

As it turns out it’s more than easy to find the others as he finds all three of them spread across the floor in Harry and Liam’s room, talking quietly with each other. For a moment he just watches them in silence, before Harry looks up and sees him standing there. The boy scrambles to his feet, but when he’s first standing it seems like he forgets what it was he wanted to do and instead just stands there awkwardly. He’s way cuter than he should be allowed to be, especially when Niall actually has to concentrate on their mission.

“Ni...” he then begins, sounding hopeful, but Niall doesn’t let him finish. He stands by what he said yesterday. He’s not eating any pills as long as things are as they are now. So he interrupts him kinda rudely, even though it wasn’t really on purpose to come across as a jerk, and begins to explain.

He explains how they’re much closer than any of them thought and how they have to get ready. He tells them what they need to do through the next couples of days, and he says that everything that happened yesterday is out of the world, because he doesn’t want what could be their last days together to be bad days. He wants them to pass with laughter, happiness, team effort and family. 

¤¤¤

Three hours of sleep is all he gets, before the pain in his knee wakes him up. He looks around confused for a moment, when he finally realises that he must have fallen sleep in Harry and Liam’s room after talking to them. The thought is confirmed when he sees Harry sitting on the floor with several bags and what looks like pillboxes spread around him.

“What are you doing?” Niall asks sleepily.

“Getting everything ready,” Harry hums as he looks through the chaos surrounding him, every once in a while putting a box to the side or opening a new bag to take something out of it.

“What exactly are you getting ready?”

“I’m a medic, Niall. More so than fighting, it’s going to be my job to make sure we all will go out of there alive. To do that I’ll need to be sure I have everything I need with me, and that what I can’t take with me will be in order and ready here for when we come back. Both if anything serious happen to one of us, or if it turns out that the girls are badly hurt.”

“Oh... That makes sense I guess,” Niall mutters, blushing just a bit for not thinking that long, but hey, he hasn’t slept more than three hours the last thirty hours or something like that. It’s not his fault!

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping some more, Ni? You’ll need all the sleep you can get, especially if you insist on not taking your pills. I’d rather not have to put you under my knives because you don’t take care of yourself,” he says gently, finally looking up from what he’s doing.

That’s when Niall really loses his breath. Harry looks so young and innocent in that moment, his green eyes big and worried. It hurts, because Niall knows that right now he’s the reason for Harry’s worry, and he doesn’t like that. He wants for Harry to be able to live without worries and without having to face possible dead within days. He wants that for all of them, he realises, but at the same time he can’t really imagine not having them there with him. The only other people he’s ever felt like this before with was Ashton, Luke, Calum, Michael, his ma, da and brother.

Family. The only ones that have made him feel like this is family. Maybe these four boys are family too. At least they could be. All Niall has to do is to open up enough for them to actually become his family.

Niall takes a decision then. He’ll do everything he can to make that happen. He wants them to be a part of his family, just as he wants to be a part of theirs. Harry might say that Niall’s already a part of his family, but Niall knows that he still hasn’t done anything to deserve that. He’s going to change that.

“Do you... do you by any change have something that isn’t as strong? Something that won’t knock me out?” he asks a little hesitant. Really, he has no interest in taking any kind of pain killers, but if it’ll help Harry to worry less, he’ll do it.

For a moment Harry looks confused, but then he lights up in a bright smile when he realises what Niall is asking for. He frantically begins searching through the bottles on the floor before finally finding what he’s looking for. Proudly he holds the pills up for Niall to see.

“They probably won’t take all the pain, but they won’t knock you out either.” With that he’s handled two of the small pills.

Niall swallows them without a second thought. Trusts that Harry won’t give him anything that’ll actually knock him out and not just take some of the pain away, because if he wants this whole family thing to work he’ll have to trust them, not only with the small things, but with his ship and with his life and if he can do that he should be able to trust the only medic aboard to know what he’s doing with his dosage of pain killers. Right?

He stays in the bed for roughly an hour, just watching as Harry keeps sorting through his stuff. After a quarter he begins smiling stupidly for no reason what so ever. At the half an hour mark he can’t help but chuckle lightly. As an hour has passed he has fallen out of them bed from pure laughter, still not knowing what he finds all that funny. That Harry looks at him like he’s about to burst into laughter too, doesn’t help one bit.

He just feels so good; the pain in his knee is almost unnoticeable and the giddy feeling making him breathless from laughter.  

“What are you doing?” Liam asks amused as he enters the small room, and sees Niall rolling around on the floor, grinning uncontrollable.

“Niall’s trying some new med. He didn’t want to sleep, so had to try something else. It seems to make him a quite... happy. He’s been laughing like that for half an hour now,” Harry explains, trying to hide a smile.

“Th...”

“I’m huuungry,” Niall interrupts with a pout. “Make me some food, Hazzy.”

“I’m busy, Niall, but I’m sure Li won’t mind making you something.

Niall frowns for a second, not sure he’s quite happy with that, but then changes his mind. “Carry me?” he asks sweetly, holding his arms up for Liam to make it easier. Liam just shrugs, a little smile playing on his lips, before taking Niall in his arms.

Without really thinking about it, Niall rests his head on Liam’s chest as the older boy carries him to the kitchen. He’s met with a vague smell of sweat, but not in a bad way. He actually smells quite good, if Niall has to say so.

“Well, thank you,” Liam says with a little laugh, making Niall blush furiously when he realises that he said it out loud. Well, oops!

“Don’t laugh at me!” Niall grumbles, hitting Liam softly on the shoulder.

“I think I like these pills. They make you quite cute. Softer in a way.”

“I think I hate them. I’m never eating any pills again.”

The pout on Niall’s face is evident, but Liam just shakes his head lightly, still smiling a little smile that feels like it is all Niall’s. It’s probably not, but in that moment it really does feel like it.

He’s being carried the rest of the way to the kitchen, where Liam gently places him on a chair as he begins fixing Niall something to eat. And thank God for that; it feels like he hasn’t eaten anything for weeks. He has of course, but right now he could probably eat two of Duvis’ very own sun-springboks without any problems at all. Okay maybe not, sun-springboks has the tendency the get quite big, so he could probably not eat two of them, but still, he’s hungry as fuck.

When the usual ration of boring food is being placed on a plate in front of him, he’s so disappointed, but he can’t really say he’s surprised. This is probably the worst part of being on missions for the Resistance. At the Order you’d at least get something eatable with you, even if you were supposed to be gone for months. This... this is just slightly disgusting, and it totally ruins the point of having a kitchen when all you’re able to make is different kinds of ‘healthy’ porridge, with everything you’ll need to survive. Sometimes if you’re real lucky you’ll find some meat hidden in the storage, but there’s never enough for it to last more than a few days, and then of course there’s the small bars with ‘everything you’ll ever need in a meal’, but those are almost just as gross as the porridge. Niall could’ve easily snuck his own food storage onto the ship before they left, but he’d been too distracted with sulking to actually get it done, something he really regrets now.

“Can’t believe they force us to eat this shit,” he pouts, looking at the food with a hopeful expression like he thinks it’ll make it somewhat more appetizing. When he’s still looking at it two minutes later and nothing has happened yet, he sighs with disappointment and begins eating.

Liam just chuckles lightly at the sight. “It’s cheap, doesn’t take up much space and it’ll probably still be eatable ten years from now.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call this eatable. And does it really look like I need space? I miss real food.”

“Yeah, babe, I think we all do. Just think of it like this; if we for some reason got lost in a black hole or something, at least we’d know that we wouldn’t die from hunger, right?” The only word Niall really notices is when Liam calls him babe. He could just as well have stopped talking after that, because Niall is too busy blushing madly from the pet name to even think of listening to the rest.

“Say that again,” he demands, making Liam look at him weirdly.

“What? What part do you want me to rep... Oh. You liked the pet name, love?” Niall doesn’t even have to say anything in answer. The blush on his face tells Liam everything he needs to know. “Let me know something though; are you going to kill me when the pills stop working if I keep calling you sweet names?”

“Maybe,” Niall admits, having a hard time thinking through the fuzziness Niall blames totally on the pills. He’s never going to let Harry drug him with anything ever again. It might be that he’s not asleep nor does his knee really hurt anymore, but like Liam said, these fuckers makes him surprisingly soft, and Niall’s not quite sure he likes it.

A soft smile spreads on Liam’s face, and he leans in so he’s close enough to Niall to place a sweet kiss on his forehead like he’s a little kid getting a goodnight kiss. “Don’t you think you should sleep some more, sweetheart?”

“I’m not tired though,” Niall argues, as he takes another bite of the porridge. _Disgusting_ , he thinks and pulls a face of the food. The first thing he’s going to do once they have gotten the Coyote-girls out of the Order’s claws is to find the first and the best place to stop and find some food that’s actually eatable. He knows a few places in this solar system where he knows the people won’t say anything if they see him there. It’s one of the more neutral places that belong under the Order, but no one living there really cares about the fight between the two sides at all.

“Of course you aren’t. What about when you’re done eating, you can go sit with Louis in the commando? You know so you can keep an eye on him and all that. Make sure he treats your lady right.”

Niall’s nodding along before Liam can even finish the sentence, because he can’t really argue with how reasonable that sounds coming from Liam right now. Besides it’s never a bad idea to have an extra pair of eyes on watch in case something happens.

He pushes the leftovers of the porridge away – like he’d actually be able to eat it anyway – and without another word he finds his way through the ship until he’s standing in the commando. He finds his seat, and keeps an eye on Louis until his eyes are too heavy to stay open.

¤¤¤

“Is everything ready?” Niall asks calmly. All five of them are sitting in the commando. Niall is steering, so he knows the others are concentrating one hundred percent.

“Yes, Sir,” Zayn mutters. “I’ve checked the whole engineer, everything is working as it’s supposed to, and we shouldn’t end up having any problems. If anything absolutely should end up not working, I’ve my tools everywhere needed, so I’ll be able to fix the problem in seconds.”

“All five capsule ships are working perfectly. I’ve personally tested them, and I have to say they’re surprisingly lovely to fly,” Louis adds thoughtfully. Like Niall doesn’t know that part already. After all Louis has used the last two days on flying around the small ships, annoying the crap out of Niall whenever he’d block his vision or begin chasing him playfully.

“All the medicine is ready too. I have the most important packed in my bag, and Liam and I’s room is pretty much turned into an infirmary just in case I’ll have to do anything major once we come back here.”

“The weapons we’ll bring with us are packed and I’ve checked up on the ships armoury too. Everything’s perfect, Niall,” Liam says reassuringly.

“Good. That’s good. I recon we’re only a few hours away from the base. Once we get there, I’ll hide the ship and you all have to be hundred and ten percent sure you know where it is, because we won’t be able to see it when first I do so. We’ll all leave in the capsules. I’ll go first, then Liam, Zayn, Harry and in the back Louis. And no, this isn’t a bad thing, Lou. You’re my most secure pilot, and I’ll therefore need you to take the back in case we’re attacked from behind. In case we’re attacked before we reach the base, I want for all of you to go back to the ship immediately, and we’ll try a new strategy. If everything goes as planned though, I’ll find a place we can hide the capsules while we’re inside.

I’ve been there before a long time ago, and unless everything has changed since I last where there, I know where we’re going to be looking for entity Coyote. As everything is right now, we have to assume they’re all still alive but hurt, so no matter what happens Harry is first priority. No one is going to die on this mission, but we need for Harry to go out of there without a scratch at all if possible. Besides it’s always the one with the baby face who dies first, and we can’t let that happen, right? Are you all with me so far?” Niall smirks as he sees Harry’s offended face and the laughter in the other three’s eyes. Good, sometimes it’s nice to be able to laugh even in a serious situation.

“If it’s the one with the baby face who dies first, how come you’re still here?” Harry huffs in return, but Niall just shakes his head, laughing softly, so Harry a bit more serious and worried gets back on track and adds, “What if we can’t find them?”

“We’ll seek the whole base for them, but if they’re nowhere to be found, we have to assume the worst. That they’re dead and beyond help. In that case we’ll retract as fast as possible. I know the mission was to get them home, dead or alive, but I won’t risk any of our lives for something that’s going in a coffin and in the ground. My answer is the same in case we find them dead. No more dead bodies are going on my ship.”

“And if we find them alive?”

“Let’s hope they’ll be able to walk by themselves so we have all hands free. We’re going to need them. Kill anything that moves that isn’t a part of either the Coyote or our crew. Do it fast and do it quiet. This is going to get ugly. I hope you’re all ready for that, because I can’t have four scared boys with me for something that’ll most likely kill us.”

The silence is deafening, but Niall’s happy about it, because that means that they all know exactly how serious this is and that in worst case not all of them are going out of this mission alive.

 “I gave you the chance to back out before you went on my ship, but none of you took it. I’m not an unfair man, and I’ll give you the chance again, now that you know exactly what you’re going into. If,” Niall says and holds a hand up when he sees how Liam opens his mouth to protest. “If any of you will take that chance, there’ll be no hurt feelings and I can’t even begin to explain how proud of you I’d be for not being stupid enough to do this and how happy I’d be with the knowing that you’d be here away from any danger.”

“What happened to ‘I don’t need cowards on my ship’?” Harry speaks up, looking a little upset. “We’re not letting you go in there alone, Niall. We’ll do this as a team.”

“It wouldn’t make you a coward to realise that this might kill you. It’d make you smart,” Niall bites out, disappointed that once again no one is fucking listening to him, not even when he’s trying to make sure they won’t get hurt.

“But it would make me a coward to let my family go in there alone,” he says softly, as he looks at Niall with those big green eyes.

For a moment Niall just stares Harry down, but when the boy won’t budge, Niall lets his gaze go from Harry, to Liam, thereafter to Louis and Zayn. Not even one of them looks the least bit like they’re even considering his words.  If Niall was able to read thoughts he’d probably hear a lot of shit familiar to what Harry just said. Well, fine then. It’s their lives. He has warned them about everything now, and if they’re still not smart enough to take the chance he offers them, then he can’t really do more about it. Stupid stubborn boys, that’s what they are!

He just huffs and looks away. Whatever!

¤¤¤

The ship is totally quiet. The soft purr of the engineer is gone, as they’re no longer moving forward. The only sound being heard is Niall’s footsteps as he moves through the ship, the other boys already waiting for him at the capsules. The only thing is, Niall’s not totally ready to go just yet. He’s made sure that the shields is hiding the Conscience, making her invisible for the eyes of everyone. She’s as safe as she can be with him not being there to look after her, but it’s not like that has stopped disaster before. After all she was supposed to be a safe place on the last mission too, and see how that went.

He finds his way to his room, and kneels in front of the hidden drawer. On the bottom of the drawer he finds a little chain, a necklace, with two moon rings hanging together. Side by side like they’re supposed to. Like they were made to be. There’s hidden powers in the rings, he remembers his mother always telling him. In a way he has always believed her, because ever since his parents got the rings, they lived and died by each other’s side, and Niall doesn’t think any of them ever really had any other wishes for each other than exactly that.

The rings won’t give him superpowers, but he doesn’t expect them too either. Maybe a little selfish part of him just hopes that either the five of them will go out of this mission alive, or they’ll die in there together, because he doesn’t think his heart will be able to bear anymore loss without losing it completely.

As he feels the cold chain settle around his neck, he can’t help but hold his breath just for a second, eyes closed as he realises how worn out he actually is. A couple of hours more, then it’ll hopefully be over. He could let over his ship for the others and sleep for days, until he finally felt ready to get up. All he has to do is to complete the mission first.

He’s just about to close the drawer, when the little box with pictures catches his eyes. Carefully he opens it and sees the picture of all of them standing there together. “Maybe I’ll see you all soon enough,” he whispers before shoving the box back in the drawer.

The way to the capsules is just as quiet as the way to his room, but he doesn’t really mind it all that much. It all still feels quite a lot better though, when the quietness is being drowned by the voices of his crew discussing something he can’t really make out from here. They stop talking when they see Niall entering. Suddenly all serious, like they realise that it’s actually time now.

Liam begins handing over everything Niall requested. Two guns, one with normal bullets the other with something more... explosive, a knife as long as his forearm, a dozen smaller knives that’s easily thrown, and of course the little black knife they confiscated from him.

He slides the black knife down his boot, and the guns and the rest of the knives in his belt.

“If I’ll ever understand your choice of weapons,” Liam mutters unhappily as he watches Niall getting ready. He has used every second he could the last two days on trying to convince Niall to rethink his choice of weapons, but Niall hadn’t budged one bit. He knows that knives might seem a bit old fashioned, but he likes them and always has.

“I don’t understand why you whine so much about it. I’ve lived this long haven’t I? That flaming stick you have by your side will do the exact same thing as my knives in the end, right? Both are looking for blood and both will find it very soon.”

“I’m just trying to look out for you,” he grumbles in answer.

“And I know what I’m doing,” Niall says calmly in return, not actually wanting this to end up in a full blown discussion. They don’t have time for that, no matter how much either of them wants to defend their choice of weapon. “Besides you haven’t said a word about the fucking _flute_ Louis has with him!”

They all look at him funnily, like he’s supposed to see something there, but he has absolutely no idea what it should be, or how a instrument is supposed to be helping them one bit with their mission.

“You don’t know what it does?” Zayn asks surprised.

“How can’t you know what it does? You can’t be as high ranked as you are and then _not_ knowing what this is,” Louis adds, when Niall just shakes his head lightly in answer to Zayn’s question.

He raises an eyebrow, and just waits impatiently for one of them to actually explain it to him.

“It’s specially designed to get the soldiers from the Order down on their knees when played right on. Louis’ an expert at it,” Zayn finally says.

“Throw that thing away,” Niall hisses out before he can even think further.

Niall has heard of those before, a long time ago, when he was still a part of the Order. He’d never seen one, or known how it was used. Mostly he has just thought it was a tale to scare the kids with to learn them that the Resistance was the enemy. His mother had always told him that it was a rare phenomenon, but that every once in a while there was someone from the enemy that was powerful enough to bring a whole base of the Order’s soldiers to their knees with a sound only.

He hadn’t believed her, but here’s his prove that the stories were right all along, and he can’t really say he’s happy about it, because that’ll mean that the stories that followed must be true too. Stories about how some people reacted very badly on the sound, and just screamed and screamed until their heads literally exploded. How some of the survivors never became normal again after hearing that sound.

There’s no way he’s letting anyone suffer like that. He might be on a mission, and he’s might going to kill every single person in that base, but he’s not evil. No one in there is going to be tortured like that.

“What? Why?”

“You’ll have to understand that this might be our only chance to get out of there alive.”

“We can’t throw something like this away. It’s art, Niall, and a very powerful weapon.”

 “Are you crazy?”

With a cold look he says, “I think you’re forgetting something. If you use that abomination anywhere near me, it’s going to have the same effect on me as on the ones we’re trying to fight. I’m not one of you, as I think we have discussed before.”

“I’m a brilliant player, Niall, and I’ll let you know that you won’t even bat an eye when I begin playing,” Louis says, rolling his eyes, like all this means nothing. Like it means nothing that this instrument is going to make maybe hundreds of people suffer badly before killing them.

“It’s a torture instrument, that’s what it is, and I’m not allowing it on this mission as long as I’m captain.”

“You’ll leave him unarmed then?” Liam asks expressionless, but the angry tone is clear to hear.

“I have a whole room on this ship full of weapons he can choose from than isn’t meant to be used for torturing anyone, not to mention I’m clearly able to see the two guns and the knife in his belt” Niall sneers in return. This much for not having time for arguments. Why are they even using their time on this? He’s the freaking fucking captain, and they’re supposed to be listening to him.

“It isn’t meant for torture,” Louis argues.

“Fine then, if you really mean than, then try it on me. If I can say afterwards that it won’t make anyone suffer, then you can take it with you.”

A smirk forms on Louis’ face, and he holds the flute to his mouth and begins playing the instrument. The melody starts of softly, making Niall sway a little from side to side, his eyes suddenly feeling heavy. The melody gets a little angrier and now it’s not his eyelids that feels heavy, but his entire body. He’s falling hard to the floor before he can even try to stop himself, but luckily Liam was ready for it and catches him before his already ruined knee would hit the ground.

The thing is, Niall can’t move. He wants so badly to stand up straight and tell Louis to stop playing, but the melody is making him unable to move even an inch. It doesn’t hurt him though. Nothing about it hurts him, maybe except from a shattered ego.

It doesn’t hurt, but Niall has this feeling that if Louis wanted to, then he could make it hurt, maybe even kill with it. There’s a bit of truth in all stories, and it’s already been proved that the instrument is real, so why shouldn’t the rest of the stories be true too? It might be that Niall doesn’t really know how the instrument works, but he still has a really bad feeling about it.

Louis finally stops playing, making Niall able to move once again. “See, I told you it wouldn’t hurt you.”

“If I see as much as one person suffer while you play that thing, then I’m going to find a way to stick it so far up your arse that you won’t be able to ever find it again,” Niall threats, realising that they don’t have time for this, they really don’t. He’d wish Louis would just stick to the weapons the others use, but he sees a lost fight when it knocks him over like this. He means what he said though. If he sees anyone in pain because of that, then he’ll get rid of it as quick as possible.

“You won’t. I’m not a bad person. None of us are.”

Niall doesn’t answer, and instead just finds his way over to his capsule ship. He gets into the little ship, and doesn’t even have to look to know that the rest of them follow him silently. There isn’t much space in there, and they’re going to have some problems fitting two people when first they rescue the girls, but Niall knows they can. Luke used to hate flying the small ships, said they were close to impossible to actually get somewhere, and always insisted on riding shotgun on Niall’s ship. Niall always knew it wasn’t the ships there was anything wrong with, but simply just Luke’s pilot abilities. He was never very happy with having to fly the Conscience either and almost always convinced one of the other boys to take his shift.

As he turns on the ship, he takes a deep breath, mentally getting ready for what’s to come. The nerves are making him shake lightly, or maybe it’s just the excitement from actually being out doing a mission again. The last couple of weeks have passed without much happening, and he knows that the real action begins now. As much as he has dreaded it, he has missed it, he realises now when he’s finally about to get going. There’s something thrilling about knowing you could die at any moment; that if you for just a second forgets to use your head it could be your last.

Maybe it’s unhealthy for him to feel this way towards it all, but after all he was born with war and grew up with dead. He simply doesn’t know how else to feel about it, because it’s all he’s ever known.

When he takes the headset on, he can already hear the other four talking, breathing, in his ears. It’s calming enough for his hands to finally stop trembling. He’s not alone in this. The five of them are going in there as a team, as a family, and hopefully they’re going out of there like one too.

“CC1 is ready to go, let me hear status,” Niall says calmly, as he waits for the others to get ready.

“CC2 is as ready as they get,” Louis says not even a second later.

It’s stupid as fuck, but Louis had insisted that the small ships should have name of their own, so it’d be easier for all of them to talk as soon as they were out there. He’d probably hoped for something better than a short version of Capsule Conscience 1-5, but Niall hadn’t budged one bit and wouldn’t even listen to Louis as he tried to convince Niall of different names for the small ships. It might be that they name everything in the Resistance, but when Niall grew up he was taught that only great things should be named, and the small ships were never meant to be named. He did want Louis to shut up though, so in the end he had said that either they’d call them CC and their number or they wouldn’t call them anything at all. 

Liam then reports CC3 ready, whereupon Harry follows as number four, and Zayn as number five. The order is stupid too and makes no sense at all, but Louis tried to convince him it was some sort of really smart military move they learned on the academy, and Niall had just nodded very unconvinced. It’s not that he care much either. This wasn’t his idea to begin with, so he just decided to let Louis have his way.

“Disconnect from the Conscience,” he says, and all at once he hear five ships letting go of the bigger ship, allowing them to fly further away. “And fall into place,” he adds when they’re long enough from the ship to be able to.

“Oh shit, I thought you said these were easy to fly,” Harry cries out, clearly having a bit of trouble steering the ship, and now Niall thinks about it, he should probably have let all of them really try to fly the ships and not just Louis, but he had thought they’d have time enough, which they all of a sudden didn’t have anymore, so they’ll just have to pull through.

“I never said _easy_ I said _lovely,”_ Louis says sassily. “Stop being a cry baby and get your shit together. You’re not that bad of a pilot.”

“Stop bickering or go back to the Conscience to do so. This is not the time or place for this!” Niall scolds angrily, receiving a mutter of ‘sorry’s for his trouble.

Each one of them reports when they’re in the formation he requested when they went over the plan for the mission, and Niall keeps giving commands so he’s sure everyone is still with him. He tells them when they have to blend the ships in, so they won’t be noticeable from the Order’s base. The blending isn’t as good as the shield on the Conscience, but it do make sure that no one will notice them without _really_ looking, because if you look close enough you’ll be able to see movements in the blending. 

He also hisses out a, “Stop! Turn off the engineer,” when a small patrol comes a bit too close to them, because the blending doesn’t make the small ships soundless either. They almost get caught there, because Harry is just a second to slow and Niall can see how the pilots in the patrolling ships keep pointing in their direction. In the end though they must decide it’s nothing, because none of them comes closer, and after only a few minutes they’re able to continue.

Niall knows where he’s going; knows that there in the outcast of the base is an easy access into the heart of it all, and that they from there easily should be able to find the girls if they are where Niall believes they are.

It doesn’t take them long to reach the place Niall wants them to go in at, and just as expected there’s only a thin grid stopping them from entering.

“Zayn, take on your mask. I need you to go out and open the grid as fast as possible. The patrol was just here, so there should be another five minutes before they’re back. When the grid is open, get inside immediately. The rest of us will follow,” Niall says. “Lia...”

“The codenames, CC1! Use the codenames!” Louis whines unhappily, like it ruins everything for him that Niall doesn’t use the names they got the ships.

“Fine, CC...3,” he sighs, having to think for a second. “I want you to connect your ship with CC5’s and pull his ship with you inside. Now shut up, CC2, before I strangle you! Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking.”

Louis just mutters something Niall can’t quite make out in return, but Niall just ignores him as he figures it’s not all that important since Louis won’t speak out loud enough for him to actually hear. Most likely Louis is just insulting him at the moment, and it’s not like he can use that to much right now.

“How am I supposed to open it?” Zayn asks, probably mostly to be polite, because Niall’s sure he wouldn’t have any problems figuring it out himself.

“However you believe is fit, as long as it’s as soundless as possible and that you’ll be able to close it again afterwards,” Niall says simply, knowing very well he won’t need more.

“Got it.”

A transparent, almost invincible mask is covering Zayn’s face to let him breath when he comes to sight. He’s moving steadily and quite fast through the short space, and is in front of the grid in no time. Behind him he can hear how Liam’s ship connects to Zayns, linking them together like when the small ships are connected to the Conscience, making Liam able to pull the other ship in with him.

In front of him, Niall can see how Zayn pulls out some sort of tool from his uniform and begins cutting open the grid. It takes longer than Niall had thought it would, and he can feel himself begin breathing harder for every minute that passes, because Zayn’s out there, totally visible for anyone to see, and in less than a minute the patrol is going to be back here.

“He’s not gonna make it, is he?” Harry whispers, nerves clear in his voice.

“Of course he is. He’s Zayn. I’ve seen him do worse in shorter time,” Liam says, trying to sound confident, but in the end he sounds just as nervous and scared as Harry.

The only thing Niall can think when he sees the patrol getting closer is, “Shit, shit, shit, shit!” They’re almost able to see him by now, and only a couple of feet more and then Zayn will be caught dead on trying to break into the Orders base. They’re going to kill him. If he’s lucky then they’re gonna do it immediately, but if he’s not it’s probably going to end up hurting, and Niall doesn’t wish that for him; doesn’t wish that for anyone.

He almost lets out a cry in happiness and relief when he sees how Zayn finally gets the grid open and gets inside before it’s too late. When the patrol flies by, the grid is once again closed and Zayn’s out of sight.

“Well, that was intense,” Louis mutters, making Niall snort out in a relieved laughter.

“You don’t say,” he says dryly in return.

“I do actually, Neil. Now wouldn’t it be a good idea to get inside before we actually die before the mission’s even begun?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Niall teases, but he still flies inside the base when Zayn once again opens the grid enough for them to be able to get through.

Niall lands and before getting out of the small ship, he makes sure that the mask that allows him to breathe is safely secured in front of his face. It’d be quite sad to end up dying because of lack of air. At least he can think of other ways he’d rather die than because he was too stupid to secure the mask right.

He then finally gets out and watches closely as Zayn gets the grid back in place. “Close it enough that it won’t open while we’re gone, but make sure it’ll be easy to break once we come back. We might won’t have time to actually do it right. By all means we might have to just fly right through it.”

“Got it,” Zayn mutters in return and keeps working on the grid until he’s happy with his work.

“And... good work out there. I’m proud of you.”

That literally makes all of them stop what they’re doing to look at him in surprise. Niall frowns lightly when they do so, not really understanding why they look at him like that. “What?” he squeals when no one moves and when he can’t stand the silence any longer.

“I think that’s the first time you’ve actually praised one of us,” Liam says in explanation.

“Okay?”

“And I just think we’re surprised,” Harry adds mildly.

“About what? That I’m actually able to do anything else than scold you?” Niall asks quite offended. Maybe he doesn’t hand out praise for every little thing, but that’s because he believes that praise is something you get if you do something to deserve it, because else it doesn’t mean quite as much.

“Well yeah,” he says with a sheepish smile.

“Forget it. We have things to do,” Niall mumbles a bit unhappy. He’s not that bad, is he?

“What is this even?” Louis then asks after a couple of seconds of silence. He’s looking around the place as to try figuring out where they’re at.

Niall understands why he’s confused. It’s just a quite big, open and empty room. It makes no sense why it should even be here, and in their eyes it must looks like nothing but a weakness in the base, and if Niall had never been a part of the Order, he’s probably have been confused too, but he knows why it’s here and what it’s for. He’s not sure they really want to know though, so he just pretends not to hear them as he begins to examine the cave-like walls. He doesn’t need them to know that this room is to kill unwanted visitors; that if they’re being found there’s a big probability that they’re going to be thrown right back out here, but this time without their masks allowing them to breath. They’d be dead before they could even open the already weakened grid.

Hopefully it won’t come to that, Niall thinks as he finally finds what he was looking for; the little soft spot in the wall that’ll allow him to open the door from this side, something an enemy wouldn’t know was there, but something that’d allow a friend to survive in case they’d end up out here by mistake.

Fortunately for Niall he was once one of those ‘friends’ and therefore knows all about the spot too. And who was it that said there aren’t good things about betraying one side in favour of helping the other? It might be that you’re quite the target for the ones you betrayed, but you do know so many wonderful things that’ll help you survive. Hopefully, at least.

The whole wall trembles a bit under his fingertips, as it allows him to push it open.

“Are you boys ready to go yet?” he asks, smirking a bit as he sees the dumbstruck expressions on their faces. Something tells him they hadn’t quite seen that one coming. 

“That’s so cool,” Liam says impressed.

“C’mon. We have to get going. Can’t stand here all day, can we now?”

He gestures for them to go through, follows them once they’re all inside, and closes the door behind them so no one will know they’ve been there in case they walk by. Not that Niall think they will. When he was here all those years ago, this part of the base hadn’t really been in use at all, and it wasn’t very often that someone would go down here. He can just hope the same will go now.

He takes of the mask so he’s sure there still will be oxygen enough for when they have to go back, especially because when they go back they’ll have four people more who need to be able to breathe.  He fastens it on his belt so he doesn’t lose it, and when he turns around he sees that the others have done so too.

“We’re in one part of the basement right now. If the Coyote are where I hope they are, then we’ll have to get up in the more lived in part of the base, to get down in the other part of the basement where prisoners is normally kept. If they aren’t there, we’ll just have to look through the rest of the base too, but I really hope we’ll find them in the basement, because I’m not really all that fond of the idea to have to go through the whole base. As little people who sees us the better,” he explains in a whisper, to not catch the attention of whoever could possibly be down here. Better be safe than sorry, because they’re not in a place where they’re ready for anyone to notice them yet. If that by any means should happen, Niall can only hope that it’ll be after they’ve found the girls so they can get out of here as fast as possible.

After all they’ll have a hard time killing a whole base of enemies.

“How do you even know all these things? I know you said you’ve been here before, but it must be so long ago that you shouldn’t be able to actually remember this much,” Zayn says with a little frown on his face, like he doesn’t really understand how Niall is doing it.

“I don’t know, I guess I’ve always just got a really good memory,” he answers with a shrug. It’s not like his memory is something they really have time to discuss right now, and it’s not like there’s much to discuss either. He’s good at remembering stuff, that’s it. Nothing to talk about there. “C’mon, we need to get going.”

For a second it seems like he wanna protest, but then realises that they really don’t have time for this right now, so he nods in agreement and the four of them follow Niall quietly as he begins moving through the basement.

Niall was right in assuming that there wouldn’t be anyone down here. It’s easy as anything to just walk through the basement without any problems at all. Not that Niall really had thought that it would be here they would have problems even if there had been someone down here.

It’s so quiet down here that the only thing Niall is really able to hear is five pairs of footsteps and the low sound of their breathing. If it wasn’t because he knows it’d be quite close to impossible then he’d say that he’s almost able to hear his own heartbeat too.

They’re so damn close to reaching the lived in area of the base, when a bad feeling hits Niall like a rock thrown in his head. He doesn’t know what it is exactly that does it, but something really tells him that something bad is about to happen. A couple of small gasps, an even lower click, and the feeling of gun pressed against his head, fulfil the bad feeling.

“Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off,” a voice says threatening, but Niall can’t help but dwell on how familiar the voice sounds.

“What are you doing here, Brez? This isn’t really your normal area,” Niall asks calmly, but still makes sure not to move one bit, because he knows Bressie well enough to know that he’s more bite than bark so to say, and that a threat coming from him isn’t a threat but a promise.

“The Order heard we’d be welcoming _guests_ soon enough and thought they’d need some help around here. Turns out they were right,” Bressie breaths in his ear. “Wouldn’t have thought it’d be you of all people I’d find though. Thought you were smarter than that, little Horan. Your parents were always so proud of their bright _little boy_.”

“And what exactly makes you think that I’m not still smart?” Niall says with a big smile even though Bressie can’t really see it with the way he’s hovering behind him. Niall knows he can hear it though, knows that it makes him sound more confident, even though he actually isn’t right now, like at all. If anything then this was probably the last person he’d have expected to run into here of all places, and it makes him really unsure, because he knows that Bressie would be able to kill all five of them in a heartbeat. After all he has used years of his life training with the older man, because as his parents always said, there is no one better soldier than Niall Breslin, and the always wanted the best of the best for their children.

Bressie chuckles lightly before mumbling with a soft tone, “I don’t doubt that you still have the head to do incredible thing, little Nialler, but I do know what a troublemaker you’ve always been, and you’ll have to admit that this isn’t your smartest move yet.”

“We’re not here to do any harm toward any of you. We just need to get some friends with us home.”

“It’s home now, then? And what makes you think that your girls are still alive?”

“The Conscience is my home. Neither the Order of the Resistance will ever be. You know that, just as I know that this isn’t your home either. Your home died a long time ago too.”

“She did,” Bressie whispers in agreement.

The gun disappears from its place beside Niall’s head, and Niall cautious turns around so he stands face to face with Bressie. Maybe it shouldn’t be this surprising, but Niall hadn’t really expected him to look so much like himself. It’s like Niall’s twelve again and is practising with a laughing Bressie because he made a move just a tiny bit too wrong so he ended up falling over his own feet. The only difference really is that the smile is gone, probably has been ever since his wife died the same day as Niall’s parents.

“Go back, Niall. You’ll just end up getting yourself killed. Those girls of yours won’t survive long anyway. They’re alive, but barely. It’d be more merciful to just let them die after all they’ve been through. Things have changed since you left, and prisoners don’t get treated very well. Leave before it’s something you’ll have to experience yourself.”

“I can’t do that. I have a responsibility for my crew and for those girls who’s suffering right now.”

“Your crew? They get more and more scrawny at the Resistance don’t they?” Bressie says, looking at the four boys who’s all sprawled on the floor from when Bressie assumingly knocked them over.

“It wasn’t me who always said size has nothing to say in whether or not you’re a good soldier,” Niall smirks and then adds, “They’re not all bad either. Maybe a bit soft for the job, but overall I quite like them.”

“You were always a bit soft too, so maybe it makes sense you like them.”

“Are you going to let us pass then? Or are you going to kick our arses and throw us in a cell too?”

“There isn’t much arse left to kick, Chief. You are the only one still standing after all. You can tell them to drop the bad acting though. None of those idiots are actually passed out.”

“We aren’t bad actors,” Louis then whines as the first. His eyes are still closed and he’s still sprawled across the floor, but he’s moving a bit more freely now they’re busted. “Or at least I ain’t any bad actor.”

“We’re definitely not _scrawny_ either,” Liam adds unhappily as he sits up and looks at the only two still standing.

Harry hits both of them gently and hisses out something that sounds like, “Don’t upset the giant! We don’t want him to kill us!”

Bressie just looks at Niall with a lifted eyebrow, and Niall can almost hear the unsaid ‘charming’ coming from him. He regrets everything he just said. He doesn’t even know these people.

“We can make a deal, Chief. I’ll help you find those girls of yours, if you take me with you on the run. You’re right. This is not my home, and I don’t really want anything to do with this place any longer. This is not me saying that I’m joining your little family, I just want out. What do you say?”

“You mean...”

“Yeah. Think you owe me that much, don’t ya? It’s not like we haven’t made someone disappear before, right? All I ask of you is to get me out of this solar system then I’ll do more than alright by myself.”

“Deal, but it’s _my_ ship and you’ll follow _my_ rules and _my_ commands while you’re staying,” Niall says with a frown on his face. This is never going to end well. Bressie is way too much of an alpha male to ever let Niall keep the commando totally.

“Sure, Chief. If that makes you feel better,” he smirks in return.

“Then show the way,” he grits out, a bit annoyed with the older man. This is really never going to end well.

As they follow Bressie, Louis pulls his sleeve carefully to get his attention. “Are you sure this is a good idea? Can he really be trusted with all of our lives like this?” he whispers so Bressie won’t hear.

“I know for sure it’s a bad idea, but he won’t betray us if that’s what you worry about. He has nothing here and like he said, he just wants to get away. Right now I’m his only possibility. He was also the one who helped me get away from here in the first place. He’ll be a great help too when we need to get the girls away. I’ve never seen anyone fight like him before,” Niall mumbles so low that only Louis is able to hear.

“I have an idea, if you’re willing,” Bressie says after they’ve walked in silence for only a couple of seconds. Niall can by now see where they’re supposed to walk up from the basement. Niall raises an eyebrow as if to say ‘go on’. “We could do exactly as you suggested, Chief. I could cuff you all and we could simply just walk all the way down the cells without anyone stopping us. It’d be easy.”

“No fucking way.”

“Are you sure this is safe?”

“You aren’t putting any cuffs on me, you bastard!”

“I’m not su...”

“You got any cuffs on you?” Niall says, cutting Harry short, because Bressie is right. It’d be easy as fuck and they’d be down there before two minutes had passed. The faster this goes the better in his eyes.

Bressie holds up a finger to signal they’ll have to wait for a moment before disappearing in the other direction. It doesn’t take him long before he’s back with five pairs of cuffs and enough rope to bind them together.

When none of the other moves one bit, Niall sighs and walks over to Bressie first. He holds his hands in front of him and waits patiently for Bressie to cuff his wrists together. It’s very hard not to notice the small smile playing on Bressie’s lips. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you, arsehole?” Niall asks with a snort.

“Have to admit that I am. You were quite a brat as a child, Horan.” Niall chooses to pretend he doesn’t hear when Louis mutters something that sound like ‘still is’, and just huffs in return to Bressie’s answer. The smile becomes more evident, and Niall can’t help but send a smile back in return. He’s missed Bressie’s smiles. It was always nice to be able to make the older man laugh when he was younger.

When the cuffs tightly secured on Niall’s wrist, Bressie turns toward the four other impatiently when none of them makes a move to go closer. Niall just sends them an irritated look, which Harry catches first. The curly haired boy pouts a little before moving closer and holding his hands out for Bressie too. Liam follows closely behind, Zayn a bit more resultant and Louis still looks like he’s going to refuse to the day he dies, which could very well be today if that idiot doesn’t get his shit together!

“You’re not going to cuff me,” he just says stubbornly, as he folds his arms across his chest.

Bressie looks like he wants to say something nasty to Louis, but ends up sighing and sending Niall a look that clearly says that Louis is his responsibility. Well thank you very much. Of course it’s now of all times that Bressie actually decides to let Niall have his way, when Niall would actually wish that Bressie just would do it.

“You’re either letting him put those cuffs on you, or you’re going back to your ship to wait on us there,” he barks out annoyed.

“If we die, I totally blame you,” Louis then grumbles looking just as annoyed as Niall, but he follows order and lets Bressie cuff his wrists, before tying them all together.

It’s quite hard walking like this, and Bressie definitely doesn’t make it easier as he roughly pushes them in front of him. If Niall hadn’t known better then he’d have thought they were prisoners too, so he isn’t exactly surprised when no one stops them as they walk by. Every time they see someone in the hallway, they just steps aside to make space for them with curious expressions in their eyes.

They’re almost down the basement when someone steps out in front of them instead of making space for them to come through. Niall recognises the woman immediately. Another good friend of his family. Another person he left behind when he ran away, and definitely another person who shouldn’t have been here, because just like Bressie, she doesn’t belong on this base, or any base for that sake. She belongs at home, on the other side of the street he used to live in.

Her eyes run over the five of them before finally settling on Niall. They widen just a tiny bit as she clearly recognises him. Niall doesn’t move even an inch when she steps closer nor does he when her fingers tightly grips his cheeks as she moves his head from side to side a couple of times as if she wants to make sure her eyes don’t betray her.

“Long time no see,” she then says quietly.

“Yeah, it’s been a while.”

“Thought you were dead to be honest. You disappeared so suddenly, dear.”

Niall doesn’t say anything in return. Honestly doesn’t know what to say. Louise Teasdale, or Lou as she had always insisted everyone called her, used to watch him when he was younger and his parents were on a mission he wasn’t allowed to follow them on. She had been a friend as much as someone who looked after him. He can imagine that she didn’t take it very nicely when he suddenly just disappeared without a word.

“Let’s get through. I don’t have all day,” Bressie grumbles looking annoyed. If Niall didn’t know him any better he’d say it was because they were stopped, but to Niall it’s clear that it’s more _who_ they were stopped by than the fact that they’re no longer moving.

You see Bressie was right earlier when he said Niall was kind of a brat when he was younger. When his parents weren’t home and Lou was the one watching him, they could use hours on planning the perfect prank to pull on Bressie just for the fun of it.

It was never a pretty sight Niall will have to admit that.

“And where exactly are you planning to take them?” she asks, lifting an eyebrow challenging.

“To the cells where the prisoners are normally kept, _ma’am.”_ The despise in his voice are dripping, but Lou only snorts out a laugh when she hears his tone.

“I don’t think so. Or well you can take those four disgraces with you. I’m taking our little friend with me.”

Niall doesn’t know where the knife comes from, but suddenly Lou is cutting the rope over, freeing him from where he was before tightly tied to his crew. Lou’s fingers are harsh when they grip his arm, and he stumbles after her when she begins pulling him with her.

“You can’t do that! You don’t have the authority to do that,” Bressie almost growls at her as he grips Niall’s other arm, making it impossible for her to go any further.

“I think you’re forgetting who the guest here is and who actually _do_ have said authority to do exactly what they want to do. Now go take care of our little friends here, and then I’ll make sure to take special care of Niall. Now, Breslin. As you said you don’t have all day.”

The look on Bressie’s face is sorry, but Niall nods in understanding as he watches Bressie let go. If Bressie keeps pushing, then everything will be wasted. Lou would know something was up, and she’d do anything she could to make sure that they’d never leave the place alive.

His eyes locks with Louis’ for a single second, but Louis must understand anyway. At least he gives a short nod that makes sure Niall is able to breathe a little easier knowing that they’ll keep the plan up. They’re talented people, and Niall hopes – _knows_ – that his crew will be able to do this without him. All he has to do know is somehow find a way out of Lou’s claws so he can meet back up with the boys.

He’s being dragged down the hallway and his crew is out of sight before he can even realise what happened. He’s alone now, something that’d normally not really scare him all that much, but now seem like the most terrifying thing ever.

In the same moment Niall can’t see them anymore, Lou’s grip loosen just a tad.

“I must admit, Horan, that I’ve missed you. We always had so much fun together, didn’t we?”

“We sure did,” Niall mutters in agreement.

None of them says a word more before Lou pushes him into a room harsh enough to make him stumble. Luckily he gets a hold of himself, before he falls face first down on the floor.

“You really did make a mess when you left, you know? They looked for you for ages but never saw the least to you. Everyone who had had even the smallest contact to you over the years was interrogated so many times that I’ve lost count. Imagine what they did to those of us that actually really knew you. Those of us that had spent hours with you every day.

“It was quite the scandal. The Order’s most beloved soldiers’ son suddenly disappeared without a clue. Was he kidnapped? Was he dead? Did he betray us? You should have known how people talked. For so many years now, I’ve hoped you were dead, because in that way at least it wouldn’t have been your fault. Now that I know that you actually decided to betray us, then everything they did to us is your fault. Every second in pain was because of you.”

“I was fourteen. Are you really going to hold me responsible for something I did ten years ago?” Niall spits out.

“Your little stunt ten years ago cost me three years in the hole. I know you’ve heard stories, we all did, but those stories were nothing compared to reality. Do you want to know what they really do to you down there? They kill everything in you except what would be most merciful. They make sure that the only thing left is a dead soul but a living body. Three years,” she whispers.

And she’s right. Niall has no idea what happened to her after he left. He can only imagine what she’s been through. He chooses not to say anything, and instead just looks at her, waiting for her to make a move.

The thing is though; she doesn’t _do_ anything at all. She just stands there in front of him with a wild expression in her eyes, an expression that suddenly become all mild and soft like she didn’t just yell at him for ruining her life.

“I have a daughter now. A little darling, I tell you. Her father was a much respected soldier. Met him when he came to free me from the hole. It didn’t take me long to fall in love with him. I must give you this much; if you hadn’t ran away then I wouldn’t have had the last six years which has been the happiest in my life.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“He died last month. Lux is the only one I have left, and more importantly I’m the only one she has too.”

Niall doesn’t make even the smallest sound as he waits for her to continue. He has this terrible feeling that it’s going to get worse. Of course he’s being proved right when she says, “Tom was killed by someone in the Order. Everyone says it’s because he knew too much and because he was becoming a risk for them. Now the rumours go that I’ll be the next. If I’m killed my daughter is as good as dead too. I can’t allow that to happen.

“You’re here to save those girls. I’m going to let you do exactly that if you take my daughter with you when you leave and promise to protect her with your life,” Lou says determined.

She grips his cheeks once again and forces him to look her in the eyes. There’s so much pain in there. Pain, sadness and hopelessness. Niall only wants to close his eyes so he won’t have to continue looking. He doesn’t _want_ to see the glimpse of mania in her eyes. It’s his fault she says, and Niall tends to agree with her. Everything she’s been through can somehow be led back to him leaving like he did.

“What about you, Lou. You can’t stay here. The rumours are bad enough; if you help us escape then they’ll most definitely kill you,” he says, feeling a bit like he can’t breathe properly.

“I know,” she just says in return, sounding as calm as ever. “But she’d be safe.”

                                                                                                 ¤¤¤

Lou is crying silently. She has her sleepy little girl hanging on her hip as she leads the way for Niall from Lux’s room to the basement.

The deal is clear. Lou will make sure their escape is without any problems at all, and Niall will make sure Lux is safe from any danger coming in her way, or as Lou expressed it; he’ll treat her exactly as if she was his own. Not that Niall thinks that’ll make this whole disaster any better. He knows nothing about kids, has never really had to deal with them before.

He’ll do his best though, and do exactly what he promised Lou to do. Keep her safe from the Order even if it’ll cost him his own life. He owes that to her at least.

He had explained their plan to her and how Bressie had already agreed to help them too. She had looked both relieved and annoyed about that, but Niall guesses it could have been worse, like if she only had been annoyed by it.

“What are you gonna do when your mission is done?” Lou asks him, sounding like she has to force the words out of her throat. He has this feeling that she couldn’t care less about what he wants to do with his life, and only asks to know exactly what he’s planning to do with the responsibility of her child.

“I don’t know,” he admits quietly, and he doesn’t.

She just nods like she understands, or maybe she simply just doesn’t want to know exactly how bad it looks for all of them, that she doesn’t want him to tell her that Lux would never be accepted at the Resistance, simply because of who gave birth to her. She probably doesn’t want to know how he was treated when he first came there either. How he had been in the darkness of a cell for just around a year even though he was nothing but a child himself. He could tell her about how he has been thinking about running away, but that probably wouldn’t soothe her either, because what child deserves to be a refugee at the age of six?

So none of them say anymore about the future, or actually they don’t really say anything at all. What should they say? ‘I’m sorry your life is crap, I know the feeling’?

“Your ship is going to seem quite small with all those people on it. As far as I remember it wasn’t really supposed to contain more than a normal sized crew, unless of course you’ve gotten a new ship since I last saw you?” Lou says when they’re moving down the stairs to the cells.

“We’ll survive. Are you sure you don’t want to come with, Lou? It might not be certain that they’ll kill you right now, but if you stay here they sure will as soon as they realise that you helped us escape. Why not take the chance to live by coming with us?”

“What you don’t realise is that if I go with you I can do nothing to help you. I’d just be in the way, but if I stay here I can make sure you’re all long gone before anyone realise what happened.”

“You’ve grown a lot since back then. All I remember was this silly girl that didn’t want to grow up. Now you’re all mature. It may not be my place to say, but I’m proud of you,” Niall says unhappily, because even though he means every word, he can’t help but feel sad about her decision.  It might be that he’s nothing but a stranger now, but so long ago he was her family and she was a part of his too. Why does the world seem to want to take all his family away from him one by one?

She turns her head toward him, and through the tears he can see the bright smile on her face. “You too, Horan, you too. I guess it’s just something you can’t stop no matter how much you try. The universe will just continue to slap you in the face until you get your shit together,” she laughs, but her laugh doesn’t seem genuine. Niall understand why too. Knows the feeling of being screwed over way too good to actually think it’s funny.

“Niall!”  a voice whispers, just loud enough for him to be able to catch it. He jerks his head in the direction he believes the sound came from, but is met with nothing but darkness. “Niall.” This time he’s able to recognise Harry’s voice, but he’s still not able to identify where it’s coming from.  Also it seems like Lou heard him this time too, because she looks into the darkness in the exact same direction as Niall and looks like she’s trying hard to listen.

She then touches Niall’s arm lightly and points to a darker shape only a couple of inches from where Niall’s eyes where focused. Harry mutters something that sounds a whole lot like, “Fucking shit!” before the sound of something hitting the ground reaches Niall. Not for the first time, Niall can’t help but wonder how Harry ever became a soldier even with the focus on medicine. He really does not have a single bone in his body that was supposed to be in this field.

Even though the situation is serious, Niall can’t help but laugh quietly as he walks over to where Harry is lying flat on the floor. He smirks down at the younger boy, before offering him his hand. A little hesitant Harry takes it and let’s Niall pull him off the floor.

“What are you doing?” he says and tries to hide his smile, so he looks a bit more like he wants to scold Harry for being silly.

“I’ve been put on Niall-watch. Apparently I was too much in the way,” he pouts sweetly.

“And what exactly happened to the plan? I clearly remember telling all of you that it was important you were there in case the girls were hurt,” Niall says suddenly very annoyed.  One thing is when unpredictable things make it impossible to follow the plan; another is when his crew goes against his orders.

“Well your friend disagreed with the plan and since he was the one with the keys then he also thought he had the right to change the plan.”

The worst of it all is that Niall isn’t even surprised. He knew this would be a bad idea, because there’s no way Bressie will ever just follow his words blindly, and Niall is too used to having the command and too stubborn to give it up. It would have been a miracle if they were ever to play nicely together, but Niall had still hoped that they’d at least get back to the Conscience before Bressie would try to get some influence.

“Fucking, Breslin,” Lou mutters, resulting in making both Niall and Harry look in her direction, Harry looking a bit shocked like he had forgotten all about her.

“Oh yeah, Harry this is another old... friend of mine. Lou this is one forth of my crew,” Niall says a bit awkwardly when the two of them just stares at each other without saying a word.

“She’s on our side?” Harry asks doubtfully.

“Uh...”

“I’m on no one’s side but my own. Niall is just able to offer me something the Order can’t,” Lou growls as she holds her daughter a little closer. It’s like Harry finally notices the young girl sleeping in her mother’s arms, because he coos quietly as if he’s not able to stop himself but at the same time don’t want to wake her up.

“What a darling,” he whispers, and looks like he really has to stop himself from storming over to take the girl in his arms.

Well that’s something new. Niall had absolutely no idea that Harry has a soft spot for children, but at the same time he can’t really say he’s surprised. Niall has this feeling that Harry will fall in love with absolutely anything that’s just remotely cute.

 “She is indeed,” she says in return, looking suspiciously at Harry while she does so. “So what? Are we going to wait here for them to come back, or do you want me to show you where the cell is?”

“Lead the way,” Niall answers, and she does as he asks, but that still doesn’t stop her from keep sending glances back at Harry. It’s kinda funny actually, how she sees _Harry_ of all people as the threat, when sometimes Niall doubts that the younger boy would even be able to kill a fly.

A loud siren begins screaming in Niall’s ear, and Lou only just get to mutter, “Fucking, Breslin,” once again before Niall can see the rest of his crew along with Bressie and the Coyote running towards them. Or well most of them are running. In Bressie’s arms are one of the girls and two of the others are humping as quickly as they can while leaning most of their bodyweight on Liam and Zayn who’s both right beside them for support. Louis is leading the way and the last of the girls are following as the last with one of Liam’s fancy guns in her hands.

“How stupid can you be?” Lou screams peevishly, while she tries to soothe Lux who’s now very awake and very much crying.

Oh, please don’t let her cry like that when Lou is no longer there to hold her. Niall already regrets this agreement. There’s no way he can look after a child, especially not one who has just lost her mother and who has never met him before now.

He’s so screwed!

“I’m sorry I couldn’t count on you being on your good side!” Bressie yells right back, storming past them in his hurry to get out of there.

Lou turns to Niall with a wild expression in her eyes. She grips his cheeks for the third time that day, as she hisses out, “This doesn’t change anything! I’ll do my best to help you get out of here, but it won’t be painless. Your part of the deal has not changed; do you understand what I’m saying?”

Niall just nods, but it’s still enough to make her let go of him. Instead she pushes him lightly to make him move, and it’s first then he notices that everyone is long past them by now.

The running makes his knee ache, but he does his best to ignore it as he focuses on everything surrounding him. They’re still in the basement and they’re still alone, but Niall can already now hear yells and loads of footstep through the siren.

Just as they’re about to run up the stairs, Niall hands one of his guns over to Lou who takes it gratefully. He knows that she probably has just as many knives hidden in her uniform as he does, but with a kid in her arms it makes it quite impossible for her to use them. You only need one hand to fire a gun, though.

It’s mildly said a disaster as soon as their back in the main part of the base. As they’re the last to get up from the basement, they’re also able to see the full picture of what’s happening. Niall can see how Harry has taken over supporting one of the girls, while Liam, Louis and the only one of the girls still on her feet are fighting the Order’s people with everything they got in a try to hold everyone away from those of them that aren’t able to fight.

The girl that was in Bressie’s arms just seconds ago is now hanging on his back, looking a bit like she’s giving her best to not end up letting go, while Bressie kills of everyone getting closer than two ft. of him.

The sound of a gunshot only inches from him finally makes him realise how vulnerable he just made himself, and the look in Lou’s eyes when he glances in her way tell him just how stupid she thinks he is in the moment. This isn’t the time nor place to get lost in thoughts, not even if it’s to analyse what’s going on, because if he hesitates as much as a second it could kill him.

It’s a fluttering feeling in his stomach when his fingers grip the knives in his belt. His breath hitch just one single time, but then it’s as calm as ever. He knows this; he’s _good_ at this! He has taken the life of more people than he’d like to even think about, but the whole act still makes him feel calmer than most relaxing activities could ever make him feel.

He remembers the first time he had to take someone’s life; how bad it had made him feel and how his mother had taken him in her arms while she kept whispering in his ear that you either kill or you get killed and that you should never be ashamed of being strong enough to be the surviving part. She had looked him directly in the eyes and said that feeling the sorrow of the loss of another human being was not a sign of weakness but the only thing that’d make sure he knew he hadn’t lost his humanity. She had then told him the exact number of kills she had done and she had described how even then it still made her sick every time she had to do it again. Niall had been eight years old when he first got blood on his hands, and the feelings of regret and remorse had been overwhelming. He’s now twenty-four and the only thing he feels when he slides the throat of the first person nearing him is only a little pang, like a small echo of what it used to make him feel like.

Not a sound comes over his lips when the bullet from a gunshot stray his shoulder, but his heart beat just a little bit faster, in acknowledge of where it could have hit, about how it could have killed him.

He looks up just in time to see Liam kill a man with a gun in Niall’s direction. “You okay?” he mouths to Niall, and Niall just nods in return, not wanting the older boy to worry about him.

When he feels someone behind him, he twirls around quickly and lets his knife cut up the young man’s stomach. He’s just a kid, Niall realises as the panic in the boy’s eyes dies down as the life ebbs out of him, maybe sixteen, can’t be much older at least. The worst of it all is that he sees himself in this boy. This could just as well have been him eight years ago, when he first began his missions for the Resistance. Had he just been unlucky for one single second he could have been the one who was dead before his life would even begin.

His eyes catch Lou and the little girl in her arms. The little, clearly scared, girl, who’s destiny was exactly the same as every other child born into the Order, until her mother decided that she didn’t want her daughter to have a life like that. Lou doesn’t only give Niall a life to protect, but also a life to make better than his own was. What she has asked of him, without really asking at all, is so much that Niall for a second loses his breath in pure fear that he’ll end up failing.

A high-pitched scream makes its way to his ear, and he can’t help but jerk his head in the direction of the sound. The blonde Coyote-girl, who was the only one of them fighting, has a burning knife pressed into her stomach. Niall can only imagine how much that must hurt. She falls to her knees in the same second Niall sends one of his smaller knives flying through the hallway and directly into the forehead of her attacker. He’s dead in the moment he hits the ground, but the damage is done. They’re now two men more down, because there’s no way she’ll be able to walk any further by herself.

Dread hits him deeply in his stomach, as he realises there’s no way they’re going to survive this. The enemy is simply too many and they’re too few. Even if all of them had been able to fight, then they’d still been in trouble. Now they’re doomed to say it as it is.

Niall isn’t a quitter though, and there’s no way he’s going to die as one, but he isn’t stupid either.

He has to throw himself on the floor to avoid being shot, landing on his bad knee that protest heavily but he’s still up on his feet only moment later, running toward the blonde to get her up before someone decides they have to stab her once again, because he’s pretty sure she wouldn’t survive that.

It all happens fast as he pulls out the knife from her stomach to prevent any further damage even though he knows that it’s a risk because as soon as the knife is gone, she begins bleeding far more than she did only a second ago. He then grips her upper arm and puts all his strength in it as he lifts her up from the ground and swings her on his back, so she’s hanging like the girl on Bressie’s back.

“Don’t let go,” he hisses. Her grip in him is weak, and he doesn’t have the advantage of being as big as Bressie, so he can’t keep her back there if she doesn’t fight for it with him. It’s hard enough as it is, and he sways just a little, when he begins to move.

The warmth of her blood spreads over the back of his uniform, and he can’t help but think he made a terrible mistake removing the knife so soon, but he also knows that if he had let it be, then he would have risked that it ruined something vital inside her, which would surely have killed her.

The weigh on his back makes his bum knee hurt even worse. He can see his vision blackening from exertion. If they were to survive this, then he’ll never protest when Harry tries to make him take his pills again. Okay, that’s a lie, but he can say as much that he’ll fight less, because damn this is a nightmare.

Niall stumbles a little, but manages to stay on his feet. Something that sounds like a couple of hundred feet marching towards them hits him, and he turns around as fast as he can, only to see his fear become reality. The whole base must be there by now. They’re so many people surrounding them that what before seemed to be a quite big hallway, now feels like it’s the smallest room Niall has ever been in.

An angry melody forces Niall to his knees, and he screams in pain both from his knee hitting the floor once again, but mostly from the burning feeling of everything inside him being twisted around. He isn’t the only one either. Every single person in here with a drop of the Order’s blood in their veins is in the exact same position as himself. Even if he could, he wouldn’t have to look at Louis to know he’s playing on the freaky instrument of his, and that it’s the melody of the flute that’s the reason of this.

Louis must realise his mistake, because a couple of seconds later the pain disappears and he’s left with a twisting feeling as a memory of what just happened. He sees Bressie and Lou being able to get up as well, and he hears how the pained cry from Lux becomes more bearable.

Niall wants to get up from the floor; he wants to march over to Louis and slap him as hard as he can for doing precisely what he feared would happen when he first learned what the instrument was. The thing is, he simply just can’t, and he doesn’t know whether it’s because he has the blonde spread over him, keeping him down, or if this was the last straw to ruin his knee completely.

The girl is being lifted of his body, and Lou kneels beside him. “There’s no fucking way you get out of this so easy, Horan! I’m not leaving my baby with any of these idiots so you better get your arse of that floor before I drag you out of here,” she hisses angrily, but Niall can sense the worry in her voice too, which surprises him. He honestly didn’t think she felt anything but anger towards him any longer. He would have understood if she hadn’t.

He just looks at her as he can’t get himself to answer her nor can he get up from the floor. His head feels dizzy, and it’s like a big stormy cloud has founds its way inside his head.

“Are you really gonna make me drag you?” she asks with a sigh, but the worry finds its way through her expression when he still doesn’t answer her. What the fuck is happening to him? “Fine then, but if you die on me now, Horan, then trust me I’m not going to let your afterlife be easy!” Niall wants to laugh in her face, because what exactly makes her think it’d be easy anyway? Niall hasn’t had one easy day since his parents and his brother were killed, why should that change just because he died?

Lou doesn’t drag him anywhere. Instead she makes Liam help her get him up so he’s standing on wobbly legs. If they let go of him, he’ll be facing the floor once again. “This won’t work. Can you carry him?” she asks Liam, who just nods and lifts Niall up in his arms. Lou takes his other gun and the small knifes from his belt, before she bends down to pick up Lux.

Louis keeps playing the flute as they move towards the first basement, making sure that no one is able to get close to them without falling screaming to their knees. At some point it seems like they realise though, that the melody of the flute can’t reach them if they stay long enough away. And Niall hears the sound of gunshot and the low whistle of knives being thrown towards them. He hears the almost soundless whimper coming from Liam and feels how his steps become irregular, so he assumes that he was hit with either a knife or a bullet.

He wants to smirk when he hears five loud bangs that indicate that Lou tried out his gun with explosive bullets, and the quiet afterwards tells him that as usual a loud bang often can solve quite a lot of your problems.

Liam stumbles a bit when he has to move down the stairs of the basement, but luckily for both of them he doesn’t fall. Niall’s not sure that any part of him would survive anymore damage. He feels so damn close to breaking in two.

The rest of the way is easy, but at the same time it feels so long. Like it’s miles longer than it was the first time they walked through.

When they finally reach their destination, they sort of all just stops moving. Louis stops playing long enough for him to get his breath, and for those two seconds it’s totally quiet besides their heavy breaths from running.

“We only have five masks. And what are we? Twelve people?” Harry then says unsure.

“Eleven,” Lou informs him without changing her expression at all. “I’m staying here. And you have eight masks. Everyone living here is required to carry around a mask. You can get my mask as long as Lux and Niall carry theirs all the time.”

“Fine, so we have six masks to nine people. That’s still a problem,” Zayn sighs.

“The three weakest of the young ladies should have a mask of their own. The rest of us will have to share,” Bressie says sharply.

All Niall wants to do is yell at all of them for being stupid. If they hurry there should be enough air in the masks to take the walk more than once and in that way they could all wear a mask as they walk out there, because in principle as long as Louis is able to continue playing they’ll be safe enough staying here for a couple of minutes more.

Bressie divides them into team. Niall and Lux will be flying with Louis. Louis will share a mask with Liam who’ll have one of the girls flying with him. Bressie and Zayn will be sharing a mask and both of them will be flying with one of the Coyote-girls. Harry will both share his mask and his ship with the last of the girls.

He can feel when Liam helps him get his mask on, but the only thing he can concentrate on is how Lou forces the mask on her daughter’s crying face, and how Lux screams louder and louder for every second that passes as Lou kisses her, hugs her and whispers sweet nothing into her ear. As she says goodbye to the only thing that has mattered to her for the last six years. He watches as Lux’s heart is being broken when she has to say goodbye to the only person she has left. The only person she knows and the only person she loves and who loves her even more. He wants to scream along with Lux and tell Lou she shouldn’t be this stupid; that she should come with them while she still can, and not let herself get killed like this.

It’s a heartbreaking sight when Lou wipes the tears away from her cheeks and kisses Lux one last time on the forehead; tells her that she loves her more than anything in the world.

Niall admires her courage. He admires that she’s strong enough to do this. He has probably never admired someone as much as he admires Lou in that moment. He can’t even imagine how hard it must be for her not to break under the sound of her daughter’s cries.

How she can trust him someone she loves this much, is beyond him.

She leads Lux over to where Liam is still standing with Niall in his arms. She holds onto Lux just a second longer before letting Liam take her hand instead. Her eyes are empty when she bends down just a little so she’s able to whisper in Niall’s ear. “I’m going to blow this whole place up. It’ll be nothing but a memory once I’m done here. Before I do so, I’m going to contact the old crew. They already know I’ve been working on getting Lux away and they’ve all agreed to help me if needed. They’ve all done well for themselves. Got a lot of friends, you know? Find them if you need anything. They’ll protect my daughter and they’ll protect you too if needed. Take care of her,” she chokes, a tear falling down her cheek.

Lou steps back, and Zayn helps the girl leaning up at him over to Louis, before walking over to Bressie where he says something Niall can’t hear. Bressie shakes his head, before nodding towards the mask in Zayn’s hands. Zayn nods in understanding and Niall figures the conversation was about whether or not Zayn should take one of the girls from Bressie’s arms.

“Louis, you’ll have to be in charge of the mask. I’ll carry Niall and keep a hand on Lux. You support Jade, and we’ll all run to your ship first. When you’re all in, I’ll take the mask and Jade and I will continue to our ship.” Louis nods, still concentrating on playing the flute.

As soon as Lou opens the door for them, Harry and the curly haired girl on his arm takes off with Bressie and Zayn following right behind. Louis helps Jade past the door opening and Liam follows in their heels. It all goes perfectly until Lux passes Lou. The girl fights Liam’s grip in her, and because Liam has enough in carrying Niall, she successes. As soon as she reaches Lou, she clings to her legs harshly.

“You listen to me right now,” Lou says calmly, pushing Lux away just enough to be able to see her face. “You _can’t_ stay here. I won’t let you. Be my good girl and follow the nice men. They’ll take good care of you.”

“No, Mommy. I wanna stay here with you,” Lux sobs.

“I’ll be right there with you, always, just like Daddy. I promise you. Go!”

“I love you.”

“And I love you too, baby, so much. Go,” she says softly, giving Lux a little push to make her move. Lux stumbles back to Liam, who holds out a hand for her to take.

In the moment they’re all outside, Lou closes the door, and Louis stops playing. He takes a breath in the mask, before letting Liam breathe too. Lux cries so much that she probably uses the air in the mask way faster than she would have if she was calm, but none of them can get themselves to scold her for it. Either way there should be more than enough air in her mask, because Niall seriously doubts that it has ever been used before, and they won’t have to walk that long.

They make it over to Louis’ ship without any problems at all. Louis shifts Jade so she uses the ship as support while Louis gets into his seat. Liam places Niall on the small space in front of Louis’ feet and helps Lux getting in right in front of Niall. They can barely be there, two people usually being the maximum, but Bressie wasn’t stupid when he made them team up. Louis and Niall is by far the smallest of Niall’s crew and Lux is even smaller.  They make it work, but Niall is seriously happy that they won’t have to fly all that long to get to the Conscience.

Liam closes the small ship and helps Jade over to his own ship and they both get in.

Niall can only watch as Louis begins working. He knows both him and Lux is pretty much in the way for everything, but Louis keeps his head cold and concentrates on getting the ship in the air.

“Are you okay?” Louis asks, glancing at Niall quickly before turning his eyes back on where he’s going.

If Niall had been able to, he’d be showing Louis his middle finger right now, and maybe just to be sure he understood the message then he’d say the words too, because no he’s fucking not okay, and Niall’s convinced it has everything to do with that fucking flute.

“Okay, I understand you’re mad at me, but do you really have to ignore me? That’s just rude. Niall!”

“He can’t talk,” Lux mutters, not looking at either of them.

“What do you mean, darling?”

“Mommy tried too, but he can’t talk. Or move. There’s something wrong with him. Has been since he fell,” she explains.

Louis stays silent for a minute, and Niall can almost hear how hard he’s thinking. “Shit. I’m so sorry, Niall. I’m going to fix this, I promise, and you can be exactly as mad at me as you want to be afterwards. This is my fault,” he then whispers, when he seemingly realises what happened. And yeah, Niall figured that much. Like, it would have surprised him big time if the flute had nothing to do with this.

They get back to the Conscience without any more damage. As soon as Louis connects the capsule ship to the Conscience the small ship is being opened and Zayn is standing in front of them. He lifts Lux out and carefully places her on her feet before taking Niall in his arms. Louis better do something about this ‘little’ problem very soon, or else Niall is going to kill him as soon as he can move again, because this is getting directly embarrassing. He is not a kid, and he does not like being carried around like one.

“Everyone got back okay?” Louis asks Zayn as he gets out of the small ship.

“Harry flew into the side of the Conscience before finding the place he should connect to her, but don’t worry she’s just fine.” He says the last part to Niall. “Just a little accident, that’s all. Perrie has lost a lot of blood and was unconscious by the time we landed. All four girls are in Harry and Liam’s room, and Harry is working his best on making sure they’re all okay. I think Niall’s friend is helping him, and Liam said something about getting the Conscience going. He went just as you landed, so we should be moving within long.”

“Perfect. I’m going to take Niall with me to our room. I have something to fix here. Can you take the girl with you to the commando? I think it’ll be best not having her anywhere near the instrument.”

Zayn nods in agreement, just as Louis takes over Niall, and holds his hand out for Lux to take. She looks at him like he’s crazy, and then she just shakes her head.

Zayn and Louis looks at each other for a second, before Zayn goes to pick up the girl. She screams so loud that Niall almost believes he’s going to end up deaf too. Niall has never seen Zayn look so shocked before, and it’s honestly hilarious. She’s a six year old girl, and she has still managed to make him look like that. In that moment Niall really sees how much the young girl looks like her mother. She’s going to be a nightmare, but for some reason Niall feels a tiny bit of excitement for the first time since he agreed to the deal.

“What’s wrong?” Louis asks, sounding annoyed.

“I want to stay with him,” she says, nodding toward Niall. “Mommy said I have to stay with him.”

“Well, you can’t be with him all the time. Go with Zayn, and Niall will come and get you as soon as he’s ready.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No,” she yells stubbornly.

“Zayn!”

“Don’t look at me, mate! I know a lost battle when I see one,” Zayn laughs with a sly smile. Louis just huffs in answer, clearly not very happy with Zayn’s words.

Louis starts walking towards their rooms with Lux following closely. “If anything goes wrong, then remember who didn’t do anything at all to keep her away,” Louis mutters to Niall, and Niall kinda just wants to laugh. Why doesn’t it even surprise him that Louis will push all the blame to Zayn, before anything has even gone wrong?

Niall can hear low murmuring from the Harry and Liam’s room when Louis carries him into his and Zayn’s. It doesn’t sound like anyone’s dying, so Niall let that calm him down a little.

Just as Louis places him on the bed, Niall can feel the Conscience come to life, can hear the low sound of her purring. A relieved feeling fills his chest, very well knowing that they’re now moving away from the Order’s base as fast as they possibly can.

Lux takes a place beside Niall on the other bed, and curls together in a small ball, while making sure she’s still able to see Niall without any problems. He wants to send her a small smile, and say something to make her feel better, but even if he was able to, he’d have no idea what to say. What exactly do you say when you’ve just lost your mother? Niall remembers all the ‘it’ll be okay’s and the ‘you just need to stay strong’s and he remembers how they’ve done nothing at all to help his sorrow, how he for every word being said just had wanted to stab someone to get them to leave him alone.

No matter what he’ll say, then it won’t change the fact that her mother is no longer here with her.

Louis sits on the edge of the bed, the flute now in his hands. “I’ll fix it, I promise,” he says just as he begins playing. The melody is different from the one he played before. It’s gentle and soft, and gives him the feeling of putting a bandage over a wound.

He has no idea how long Louis plays, mostly because he falls asleep before it’s all over.

¤¤¤

When Niall wakes up, the first thing he sees is Lux lying beside him, sleeping heavily. He then notices the burning feeling of pain in his knee and the not quite as painful feeling in his shoulder where he was shot. His head ache and his whole body is sore, but on the inside he feels more like himself, like Louis never even played the flute in the first place. What’s most amazing though is that his body doesn’t fight him when he carefully sits up. He yelps in pain from his knee, and that’s when he realises that he won’t be able to walk. It might be that he’s no longer paralysed, but his body is still fucked up.

“Harry says there might go a while before your knee is better,” Louis says tiredly. Niall turns his head towards the sound and finds Louis sitting in the corner of the room, looking at him like he’s ready to take a nap and could fall asleep at any moment. He sees the bandages on Louis’ hands, but doesn’t say anything about it; knows it’s there because he had to play so long. He doesn’t have to ask either, to know that the flute will be hidden somewhere on the ship where he’ll probably never find it, and that none of them will ever tell him a word about it either, because they all know that Louis did exactly what Niall had feared he’d do, whether or not that was on purpose Niall doesn’t know, and that if Niall ever get his hands on the flute then he’ll make sure to destroy it without hesitating a second, something they all for some reason seem to find unthinkable.

Niall just nods, already having figured out that there will go a while before he’ll be able to jump around again, or even just walk without being close to fainting. It’s nice to know that Harry feels positive that it will become better though, because right now it really doesn’t feel like it will.

“I-I had to knock the girl out. We heard a loud bang, and then Harry came in, screaming something about the Order’s base having exploded. She screamed and cried so much that I for a second was worried she’d end up killing herself.”

“It’s okay. I knew it’d happen,” Niall says hoarsely. “Lou told me her plan before we left. I hoped Lux wouldn’t find out, but we’ll deal with it. It’s okay.”

None of them says anything for a while, just looks at each other, until Niall softly murmurs, “Why don’t you sleep a little? You look dead tired, mate.”

Louis snorts out a laugh that sound as fake as anything Niall’s ever heard, and shakes his head lightly.

“Your little friend forbad me to sleep until you were awake. Said that since I was the reason you were hurt in the first place then I was going to stay awake until you were alright again. I’m damn fucking happy that you’re finally awake because I seriously began to worry that he’d end up taking over completely, because he has honestly done nothing but acting like he’s the Captain since we got back.”

Niall is seething in anger. Fucking Breslin! He should have known this would happen. No, actually he did _know_ this would happen in the exact moment he agreed to take Bressie with them, but it had never been his plan to end up using hours sleeping as soon as they got back to his ship, so he didn’t have a change to prevent this.

“Okay new plan, sleep is going to wait. Help me to the commando,” Niall commands. Louis mutters something Niall can’t make out and sighs dramatically before getting off the floor. The small smirk on his lips though, tells Niall that this was exactly what he hoped for when he told him about Bressie, but now just tries to make it look like it’s all Niall’s plan.

When Louis picks him up from the bed, he stumbles a bit over the sudden weigh in his arms, and Niall is for a second afraid he’s going to drop him. He stays on his feet though, and become more secure in his movements as he carries Niall through the room. Niall sends one last glance to the little girls still sleeping, and decides that she won’t wake up anytime soon.  

None of them says anything as Louis carries Niall down the hall and into the commando.

He notices one of the girls – the one with the darker skin Harry helped around earlier – sitting in Louis’ seat and Zayn sitting beside her. They’re talking quietly together, none of them actually steering the ship. His eyes moves to Bressie and as soon as he sees him in his seat, all he wants to do is to march over there and slap him in the face for not having any respect for him what so ever.

 _You don’t take a seat in another man’s chair. If it aren’t your ship and if you aren’t the Captain of said ship, then you shouldn’t sit down in the Captain’s chair without permission. It’s common respect to show the Captain that you know who’s in charge,_ his dad used to scold him, whenever Niall playfully would steal his father chair, pretending to be big enough, strong enough and smart enough to be Captain on his own ship. Everyone in a crew has their place and as someone who doesn’t belong there, you ask before you take. Niall knows that, and he also knows that Bressie grew up with the exact same rules. He assumes it’s along the same lines in the Resistance because no crewmate has ever tried to take his chair without his permission.

“Get out,” he says coldly, catching Bressie’s attention. He turns the chair around so he’s face to face with Niall, and Niall immediately sees the challenge in his eyes, and Zayn and the girl becomes quiet beside him.

“Oh, you’re awake. Was a bit unsure for a bit if you’d make it,” he smirks back.

“Get out,” Niall says again.

“And why’s that, Chief? You can’t even stand on your own two feet. Why don’t you just go back to bed and let me in charge while you heal? I know very well what I’m doing.”

“And I don’t need to be able to stand to kick your arse. This is my ship, I’m the Captain and you’re sitting in my seat, you little shit!” Niall feels lightheaded, like he could faint at any possible moment. He know though, that if he can’t even stand his ground, then Bressie will lose any respect he has left for him, and Niall can’t let that happen. “Put me down,” he demands Louis, who immediately shakes his head, looking like he thinks Niall is crazy. Maybe he is a little. “Now, Tomlinson!”

Louis looks like he wants to keep protesting, but Niall sends him a warning glance that clearly tells him that he isn’t in any position to do that and that he better do what Niall asks of him.

Not a sound leaves Niall’s lips when Louis carefully puts him down, but the pain is still overwhelming, making black spots appear in his vision. His knee almost gives after under him when he a bit unsure begins walking over to Bressie. “Get out of my chair, Breslin, or I’m going to throw you in a cell for the remaining of this trip. The deal was clear; I’d give you an escape but only as long as you understood where your place on this ship were. Have you forgotten?”

“Of course not, chief. It’s good to know there’s still some left of the boy I used to know. Got a bit worried that the bastards had ruined you, but I see you’re still very much the lad from back then.” Bressie’s smile is almost soft, and Niall can’t help but feel confused. Why would it even be important for Bressie whether or not he had changed since then? All this is for him is an escape, so why does it even matter?

Niall steps back when Bressie stands up. He doesn’t decline the hand Bressie holds out for him, because he knows he has already passed the test, and truth be told he’s so damn close to fainting. Bressie helps him down in his seat, and Niall can’t help but sigh in relief.

“That knee of yours still killing ya?”

“More than ever,” Niall chuckles darkly.

“It’s a shame. I could have done so much for you if it hadn’t been for that accident. Too bad your parents kept insisting you were too young to really getting trained.”

Niall shrugs in return. “Lived this long, haven’t I? Not many get trained like that anyway, so the possibility that I’ll ever need it won’t be big.”

“What do you mean ‘really getting trained’?” Zayn asks with a frown.

“You have your flutists and we have your special group of soldiers too. There aren’t many left, but we’re here.”

“Bressie’s one of them,” Niall adds. “Could kill all of us even if we were on our best and have taken over the ship in less than five minutes. Real impressive to watch, a damn hell to fight against though.”

“Tell me again why you thought it’d be a good idea to take him with us,” Louis mutters sceptical.

“Ya still alive aren’t ya? That’s why, _boy._ ” Louis sends Bressie a mean look and murmurs something that to Niall sounds like, ‘Can’t wait to get rid of this bastard.’ Niall’s too tired to scold him for it though, and thinks for himself that if it bothers Bressie that much, then he’ll just do it himself. It’s not like he’s ever been afraid to let Niall know when he should shut his mouth, so he doubt that it’ll be any different with Louis.

The air feels awkward, but Niall’s too tired to do anything about it. They could begin stabbing each other and he’d still not have the energy to stop them.

“Maybe you should go back to bed,” Zayn suggests, seemingly having realised that there’s no way Niall can stay awake much longer.

“Not yet. Please introduce me to the beautiful lady. I have this feeling I haven’t quite given a very good impression so far, and after all we’re going to spend a long time together.”

“Leigh-Anne Pinnock. Second in command on the Coyote,” she speaks up before Zayn gets a chance. “It’s nice to meet you Captain Niall Horan of the Conscience. We’ve all heard quite a bit about you. And don’t worry all that much; I’ve learned quite a long time ago that you shouldn’t judge someone from a first impression.”

“And I’ve learned that people tend to do so anyway, but it’s good to know now everyone does.  It’s nice to meet you too, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, second in command on the Coyote. I’m sorry to be a bore, but my crew is starting to look at me a bit worried, so maybe it’s time for me to go back to bed.”

“Sometimes it’s a good idea to listen to your crew. Good night’s sleep, Captain,” she laughs softly. Niall nods at her with a little smile on his face, before looking to Louis. The older lad gets the hint and comes over to help him get up. Louis looks at him for a second before picking him up in his arms.

Louis is quiet for a moment as he carries Niall down the hallway. Then, “Why don’t we have a second in command?”

“Because we don’t need one. I’m Captain, and all four of you are equals. Not more to discuss,” Niall says sharply.

“But if we had had one, who’d it be?” he presses on.

“As I said; not more to discuss. If I had needed one then you’d all have known by now. Ranking like that works for some crews, but I’ve also seen how it can slit up crews it didn’t work for. I’ve never understood the need to do it anyway. This works a hell of a lot better.”

“Okay, okay,” Louis grumbles. He’s then silent for a whole second before adding, “But it would have been me right?”

“Louis!”

“I’m kidding! Okay, I’m sorry, I was just kidding. No need to get your panties in a twist.”

Niall just huffs in return. This is exactly what he meant. The whole ranking thing just causes arguments, and it’s true what he said too; he really never has understood the point in doing it, but then again it’s probably because he’s raised in the Order. The only ranking they use when it comes to crews is that there’s a Captain and then there’s the rest of the crew. It’s different on the bases, but there’s also more people living on those. A normal crew is around 4-6 people and if you begin ranking that few people, then it’s bound to cause trouble.  It wouldn’t be fair to the one with the lowest rank either. It’d be like saying, ‘I’m better than you, he’s better than you and oh yeah so are the two of them.’

It’s different in the Resistance, though. Before Niall got his ship back and his own crew, he lived with nothing but ranking. He usually got ranked the lowest, but at the time it didn’t really matter much to him, because he always had a feeling that the Resistance’s leaders had something to do with that. As soon as he got his ship back though, he promised himself that it wasn’t how he wanted to do things. Maybe the Order aren’t any better than the Resistance with a lot of thing, and vice versa, but they do get some things right and Niall believes this is one of them.

They reach Niall’s room first, and Louis stops in front of the door, hesitating like he isn’t sure if Niall wants to sleep alone or if he’d rather sleep in Louis’ room. “What are you waiting for? Take me to your bed!” Niall says, making it easier for him. Louis’ sigh almost makes him sound like he’s relieved and Niall wonders if it’d because he now won’t have to decide himself or because he’s happy he won’t have to sleep alone.

Louis walks the last couple of ft over to his and Zayn’s room. Niall touches the door lightly for him, so it opens. Louis hesitates once again when he sees Lux still sleeping in the bed, giving Niall the feeling that he wasn’t the only one who for a second had forgotten about the young girl.

“Let’s hope she likes a cuddle,” Niall shrugs, making Louis snort out in a small laugh.

¤¤¤

It’s hard having all these people on a ship like Niall’s, that aren’t supposed to have more than five people at the top living there. Five beds to eleven people are really not enough, not even with one of them always being in the commando.

The Coyote-girls takes over Liam and Harry’s room, and Niall tries to convince Lux that she should be sleeping with the other girls, but the little lass won’t even let him finish speaking before she refuses and says she has to stay with him, so when Bressie has the steer Niall and Lux sleep in Niall’s room, but when it’s one of the other’s turn Bressie sleeps in Niall’s bed and the two of them join the rest of the lads in Louis and Zayn’s room. The most funny is when it’s Niall’s turn to fly his ship, because even then Lux won’t hear anything about leaving him alone. She really has taken her mother’s words to her heart. When that happens, Lux either sleeps in the seat beside him, or at the times when she can’t sleep she just stays awake with him. When Niall thinks it’s safe, he teaches her how to fly the ship, just like his own parents taught him the exact same thing when he was a kid.

Harry keeps doping him with all kind of painkillers in a try to take some of the pain of him, so he’s constantly tired and barely steers the ship in the daytime anymore. Almost all of them tried to convince him that he shouldn’t fly at night either, but Niall being as stubborn as he can be when he wants to, had just flipped them of and told them that he’d do whatever he wanted to do, because after all _he_ is the Captain, not any of them.

It’s okay though. It’s only once every sixth night that he actually have to stay awake for a longer period of time. Other than that he can go take a nap whenever he needs to because there’s more than enough people here to take over if he can’t keep his eyes open anymore, and Lux never seems to mind taking a nap with him.

She looks so much like her mother that it’s almost creepy, and with that Niall means both in look but also in mind. She can be a little devil when she wants to, when she sets something to mind she won’t hesitate going through with it, she’s smarter than most people her age, but at the same time she can sit hours each day just watching all of them, something Lou wouldn’t have been able to do even if she was cuffed to a chair and unable to move. Niall’s quite amazed with her, he’ll admit that much.

He has no experience with children and he believes she quite quickly figures that out too, because instead of just expecting different things from him, she tells him if she needs anything. She tells him she’s hungry the day he barely remembers eating himself because he’s so long gone on painkillers. She tells him the day she feels bad and asks him to stay in bed with her because she doesn’t want to be alone. She tells him when she’s sad because she misses her mum and she demands that he cuddles her till she feels better.

They make it work, even though Niall had his doubts in the beginning.

Each day Niall also sees more and more to the Coyote-girls. After the first day he got proper introduced to all of them, even though Captain Jesy Nelson was barely awake at the time. The Captain is the one who has to stay on bed the longest, as she without doubt was the one who had it worst while being captured. Both Leigh-Anne and Jade fairly quickly gets back on their feet and often offers to help flying the ship. Niall allows it at day, but is determined that they as his guests should not have to take the nightshifts.

It takes Perrie around a week to not be close to fainting every time she takes a step and around another week before Jesy is able to join the in the commando too.

It’s weird having so many people gathered together like this. Niall’s never alone anymore, and sometimes he really just feels the need to kick them all out so he can get a moment to himself, but even if he was able to get rid of all the grownups he’d still have Lux clinging to him.

Some days there are more fights going on than others, and Niall knows that ninety percent of those fights involve Bressie, Jesy and himself. All of them have different ways of doing things, and none of them are able to shut up when they disagree with something one of the others do, because they’re all way too used to be able to spit out commands. Niall usually wins the arguments probably because he always ends up yelling, ‘this is _my_ ship, we do as _I_ say’.

It’s the middle of the night and even though it isn’t really Niall’s turn to have the steer he had offered anyway, and by offered he means fought to the last with Louis to get to fly tonight. Lux is still awake beside him, and doesn’t really look like someone who’s planning to go to sleep anytime soon.

Niall glances at the navigation-system and notices how close they are to a populated planet. They’re no longer in the Order’s solar system, and this area is more neutral than most they’ve been in so far. If they were to choose a side then Niall knows they’d be on the Order’s, but the place is as safe as it’ll be as long as they’re still closer to the Order than to the Resistance. Besides Niall knows for a fact that he’s been here before, a long time ago maybe, but he still remembers being here with his parents and his brother. It had been nice, almost like home.

“Hey, are you up for an adventure?” Niall asks cheekily.

“What kind?” she asks, looking at him like she’s not sure he’s serious or not.

“You know everyone is asleep so they wouldn’t notice if we landed for half an hour. If we hurry we’ll be able to find a place to get some real food, and maybe even some clothes for you. What do you say? You wanna go explore for a bit?”

“Okay then, but when it all blows up and everyone find out then I’ll blame you,” she says seriously, making Niall laugh.

“Sometimes I worry that you’re nothing but a clone of your mother, little Lux,” he grins softly. She beams brightly by his words, clearly proud of this, and Niall wants nothing but for her to continue being proud of exactly that, because if she grows up to be just like Lou, then Niall will feel like he did quite a good job after all.

Niall changes the settings on the navigation-system so instead of focusing on the galaxy in a whole it narrows in on the planet they’re going to land on, making it possible for him to know where exactly he’ll be able to land so they’re in a city and close enough to everything to not have to be there for hours.

He lowers the speed as the get closer, so he won’t end up crashing into something, and flies more carefully as he keeps glancing at the navigation-system. They land with a little bump that’s almost unnoticeable if it wasn’t because he is very aware of what he is doing, since he tries his best to not end up waking anyone up so they can ruin the adventure before they can get out of here. He considers for a second to let the engine stay on, but turns it off just in case someone should get the brilliant idea to try get in here. It wouldn’t exactly be very funny to end up getting his ship stolen because he was stupid.

“Let’s go, love,” he says as he gets up from his seat. Without thinking he holds his hand out for her to take, and when she does he pulls her with him. He stops for a second before they get out to find the little bag with golden coins in it, before continuing outside.

She looks so amazed as she looks around, that Niall can’t help but laugh softly. She has probably spend so much time on that base, that she hasn’t been allowed to come out and explore very much. Even though it’s dark in the city, there’re still lots of people out and about. Stores are still open too, so the trip won’t end up being a flop, not that Niall thinks it would have been anyway, because no matter what they’d been out from the ship for a little while, and Niall thinks that maybe both of them needed to get away from everything for a bit.

Niall is limping quite a lot as they walk closer to the centre of the city and they don’t exactly move very fast, but Lux doesn’t seem to mind; too busy watching everything around her to even notice it.

As they walk down the street no one looks at them twice, not because they necessarily looks like everyone else, because Niall can see a lot of weird creatures, but because the people probably is more than used to having visitors.

He eyes a store that looks like it sells clothes for kids and drags Lux with him in there. He helps her pick out a couple of soft shirts and trousers and finds a pair of shoes in her size too. When he sees her eye a cute dress he doesn’t even say anything as he throws it in the basket with the rest of the clothes. He makes her try it all on, doesn’t really see any reason to buy it all if she wouldn’t be able to use it anyway, and when he’s sure it all fits he takes it all with him to the cash register and pays.

For a moment he considers trying to find some clothes for the Coyote-girls too, but ends up deciding that for now they’ll have to live with using his and Louis’ clothes, because this trip is about him and Lux and besides it was more important to get some clothes she was able to fit in than Jesy and her crew since they easily can use what they have on the ship already.

“Have you ever had ice cream before?” Niall asks as he sees the little store. He knows that it isn’t something that’s made much of and he’d honestly be surprised if she says she has, because it’s close to nowhere you can get it anymore. When Niall was still just a kid it was more common than now, and it’s a shame because it’s such a nice treat.

“No,” she says and shakes her head, so Niall begins walking toward the little shop. He buys both of them a cone of ice cream and gives her one of them.

It’s funny to see how she looks at it suspiciously before glancing over to Niall who’s already eating his. When the ice cream begins dripping she gives in and licks at it carefully. Her eyes become big as she tastes the sweet ice cream. 

“Oh good lord,” she whispers.

“Do you like it?” he asks, already knowing the answer with how she’s now eating the ice cream so fast that she gets more on her face than in her mouth.

“Mmmmm,” she just hums in return, and Niall chuckles lightly.

They walk further down the street, not really with any goal in mind, and just enjoy the sweet taste in their mouths and the wind in their hair. It’s nice being able to be outside like this again, and even though Niall loves his ship more than anything, then it has been months since he has last been out like this, and he has missed it.

Lux finishes her ice cream before he does, so he offers her the rest of his and she takes it happily.

For a while they just stays there, doesn’t really do anything but wander around, looking at the stores and the people, but Niall enjoys every second and going by the expression on Lux’s face then she does too.

They find a grocery store and Niall possibly goes a little overboard with all the food he buys, but they’re going to eat like if they were home for the rest of this trip, because Niall won’t go another day eating porridge and protein bars. He really doesn’t think he’d survive it.

After that Niall carries several bags with them back to the Conscience, Lux also carrying one since she insisted that she should help and they put it all in the kitchen before going back to the commando.

“You wanna get out of those big clothes?” he asks softly. At the moment she’s wearing her own, by now quite dirty trousers and one of Niall’s t-shirts. It’s so big on her that she’s swimming in it, but at least she could wear it without it literally falling of her. Through the last couple of weeks she’s been going back and forth between her own clothes and some of Niall’s every time they had to wash her own.

“Yeah. Don’t peek,” she orders, and waits until he has turned around to begin looking through the back with clothes. When she tells him she’s done, he turns around and sees her wearing the dress.

“We should have bought some more of those. Remind me that we’ll have to do that sometime.”

“Will do,” she promises. “Can I fly the ship, Ni?”

“As soon as we’re away from here then you can.”

As he promised she gets to fly as soon as they’re long enough from the city that she won’t crash into anything, and she flies for around an hour before she’s so tired that she can’t keep her eyes open anymore, so Niall takes over until Harry as the first wakes up and wanders into the commando.

His eyes immediately go to Lux and they widen a little when he sees what she’s wearing. He then frowns, looking like he can’t really make sense of any of it.

“But...”

“But nothing. I won’t hear a word,” Niall says, shutting Harry up. The younger lad just shakes his head lightly before taking a seat. Niall lets him take over the steer, but he stays where he is for a little while longer, not quite ready to go to bed yet.

Jade comes in next and she immediately coos at the sight. “She looks like a little princess.” Niall can’t help but smile proudly. She really does look like a princess; his own little sweetheart. Wait... “What’ve you two been doing tonight?” Jade then laughs.

“We went on a little trip. Bounding time, you know,” Niall shrugs. “I got real food too. No more porridge.”

“Nice. You treat us well, Captain.”

“Am trying my best,” he smirks, just as Liam and Louis enters the commando too. Both looks like they want to comment on the dress, but Niall just sends them a glance that clearly tell them to keep their mouths shut.

“I think I’m going to take the princess to bed now. You idiots will just end up waking her with your talking.”

He gets up from his seat and carefully lifts Lux up in his arms. She moves a little, and Niall hold his breath, worrying for a second she’s going to wake up, but she then just rests her head against his chest and happily continues her sleep.

“You’re becoming a right mother hen, you know that?” Liam laughs softly.

“Shut up,” Niall just mutters in return, cheeks turning pink in embarrassment. It just causes all four of them to laugh at him, so he flips them off, before quickly leaving the room. They all think they’re so damn funny, when in reality Niall has never been less amused. He’s not acting like a goddamn mother hen!

On his way to the bedrooms he passes Jesy and Leigh-Anne. Leigh doesn’t seem to notice, but Jesy eyes the dress curiously, but ends up just nodding at Niall and mutters, “Captain.”

“Morning,” he murmurs in return but doesn’t stop up to chat; would rather be able to get to bed without having any more people teasing him. He’s not even doing anything but keeping a promise to an old friend.

Zayn is still sleeping when he gets into the room, so he carefully places Lux on the bed beside him, before quietly changing into some other clothes that’s more comfortable sleeping in. He lies down on the bed beside Lux, so she’s lying in the middle of the two of them, and is just about to turn around on his side, when Lux in her sleep cuddles closer to him, so he can do nothing but hold her in his arms.

He’s still awake when Zayn finally wakes up around an hour later, and he’s not sleeping either when Liam comes in to wake them up for lunch. He just lies there, cuddling close to the little girl in his arms, who got no one but him left in her life.

Not for the first time he can’t help but have a hard time believing that Lou would ever leave him something – _someone_ – as amazing as her daughter.

¤¤¤

It’s late at night, and they probably should be sleeping by now, but Niall is too long gone in the old book he’s reading, and Lux is curiously moving around in his room, looking at everything it seems. It’s Bressie’s turn to have the nightshift, so it’s one of the rare nights where Niall can actually sleep in his own bed and not having to worry about being kicked out of the bed through the night.

The bed moves slightly as Lux sits down in front of him. She’s quiet for a couple of seconds longer before asking, “What are these?”

Niall’s eyes fly to her and he sees how she’s sitting with his necklace with the two rings hanging from the chain. He remembers throwing the necklace into his drawer one of the first days after the got back to the ship. How he did not realise she had found his secret – or by now not secret at all – drawer, is beyond him. He should have heard her messing around over there, but he didn’t. She’s as smart and sneaky as her mother, he realises, not that he can say he’s surprised.

He watches her for a moment as she turns one of the rings between her fingers, eyes sparkling as the stone in the ring does the same.

“Moon rings. They come in pairs and are made from the same piece of stone. My parents used to tell me that the rings bring luck for you and the person wearing the other ring. Supposedly they can keep you and your loved one together to the last and bring some light into times that seem so dark. It’s nothing but myths, but my ma always did love the tales of the rings. She and my da wore them from the day they got together to the day they died,” Niall tells her.

She fidgets a little, like she wants to try one of the rings on, and looks over at Niall as if to see if he’s watching her. Even with the knowledge that she won’t be able to fit the ring on her finger, he takes the necklace from her and removes the smallest ring from the chain and gives it to her. She looks at him for a second more, before putting the ring on her finger. As he thought the ring is way too big for her small fingers, but he can see it in his mind, an older version of the little girl in front of him with that exact same ring on her finger, this time with the ring fitting perfectly.

He takes his da’s ring of the chain and holds his hand out until she gets the hint and takes of the ring and gives it back to him. When his ma’s ring is safely back on the chain, he carefully locks the necklace around Lux’s neck.

“It’ll fit one day, love. You can wear it like this until it does.”                                                           

“But it’s yours,” she says with a frown, like she doesn’t understand why he would just give it to her like that.

“My fingers are too big for that small ring, and they won’t get any smaller. Besides, I got this one; I don’t need two. It isn’t only a ring I’m giving you either, Lux, it’s a promise that you won’t ever be alone. I’ll make sure of it.”

Niall isn’t sure if she really understands how much he’ll go through to make sure not to break this promise, not with how much she recently has lost and with how incredible young she is, but she nods either way, muttering a small ‘thank you’ before cupping her hand around the ring for a second. An almost unnoticeable smile shows on her lips, but for Niall it’s enough. It’s a promise that one day it’ll all be better; for both of them, he believes.

¤¤¤

The next few weeks go so fast that Niall doesn’t even feel he gets to blink before the navigation-system tells him that they’re only a couple of days from Duvis. There haven’t been any problems since they the base; Lou’s sacrifice clearly haven been enough to stop whoever could have followed them otherwise.

Bressie is still with them, kept saying he couldn’t leave them alone until he was sure they were back safe, but Niall has still feeling that it’s more about the fact that he doesn’t really want to be alone anymore. In a way Niall gets it. The year after he lost his last crew he got so used to being alone that it was almost painful having four other people with him all the time, but now he has a hard time living with the fact that very soon they’ll go from eleven to at the most seven. Maybe even less, because Niall doesn’t know what will happen once they get back.

He doesn’t really want to say goodbye to any of them, but lately he has begun realising that no matter what then he has another person to think about now; that his decisions will now affect another person too. He has also come to the decision that there’s no way he’s going to raise Lux on Duvis. He remembers his first years there and he knows that he does not want anything like that to happen to her.

So yeah at the most they’d be seven, but Niall has this feeling that they’ll be a whole lot less. No, he doesn’t have a feeling; he knows this for a fact.

The next days are nice, like all of them realise that soon enough their little adventure will be over. There’re more laughs than Niall is used to, and it’s constantly soft teasing from all of them. Over the last couple of weeks Lux has become more content on the others, and doesn’t cling quite as tight to Niall anymore. He’s still the one she comes to when something’s wrong and she still sleeps in his arms every night, but through the day she doesn’t seem to mind it anymore if she’s not able to see Niall every second.

Sometimes he’s able to catch her pull pranks with Louis. Other times she has one of the Coyote-girls to do her hair. He loves seeing how soft she can make Bressie, and how Harry becomes an even worse mother hen than himself every times she stumbles. It’s like they’re all one big family and Niall hates the thought of having to give it up.

“Only one day left,” he says quietly. He’s sitting behind the steer, Bressie being the only other in the commando right now.

“Yeah,” he sighs in return. “Guess you’ll have to find a place I can be before we get there. Don’t really fancy getting thrown in prison by those wimps.”

“I-I actually have a favour to ask of you,” Niall says a little hesitant. He quickly looks around to make sure no one is near. When he safely can say they won’t be interrupted he continues, “I don’t want them to find Lux. I want her to stay here while I finish my business on Duvis and get everything ready.  If it isn’t too much to ask of you I’d like for you to stay here with her.”

“What exactly do you need to get ready, Niall?” he asks with a frown on his face.

“An escape.”

¤¤¤

They have to knock Lux out with some sleeping pills for Niall to be able to leave the ship without her. She had screamed and yelled when he tried to talk her into staying on the ship with Bressie voluntarily, and wouldn’t listen to any reason at all, so Niall had done the only thing he could think of that would make it possible for him to leave. Everybody seems to agree with him that it isn’t a good idea to tell anyone about her right away, but what only Bressie knows is that Niall doesn’t plan to ever tell anyone about her at all.

Bressie and Lux are hiding in one of the capsule ships, which are good, because as soon as Niall lands the Conscience and opens the doors outside, they have soldiers all over them. He can’t even say he’s surprised by the welcome; has tried it one too many times to even bat an eye anymore.

He recognise some of them, Paul, Andy and Paddy among other, ones he has seen so many times that he doesn’t hesitate to smile back to them when they nod in his direction.

“I guess Simon wants to have a word then?” Niall says casually, when Paul leads them toward the base of the Resistance’s most important leaders. Ever since Niall became Captain, Simon has been the one to give him his missions. He has also been the one to scold Niall every time they thought he made even the smallest mistake.

He isn’t too bad though. Some days when Niall’s in a good mood, he even tends to like the older man, because it might be that his tongue can be full of poison, but he also knows how to let you know when you’ve done something to be proud of.

“He does. He’s been waiting for you for days now. I believe he’s going to be happily surprised when he finds out that you actually succeed in getting the girls home.”

“Do they really have that little faith in me?” he asks, pretending to be offended, when in reality he doesn’t give a fuck about what they think of him. He doesn’t need their approval to know he’s one hell of a soldier and an even better Captain.

“Who knows?” Paul shrugs. When they come to the entrance of the base, Paul along with the other soldiers stop up and Paul says, “You know the way, Captain.”   

“I do indeed,” Niall mutters, and leads the way through the building with his crew and the Coyote-girls following closely.

When he gets to Simon’s office, he doesn’t even bother to knock before walking inside. It’s obvious that he interrupts some sort of meeting, because Simon stops talking the minute Niall walks in and both he and the man he was talking to looks annoyed by the interruption.

Too fucking bad for them! Niall has better things to do than to wait for Simon to be done all day. Without showing any respect at all, he takes a seat at the table and stares down the other man, until Simon sighs and says, “Can you please wait outside for a moment, Officer?”

The man grumbles something not very nice at all, but Niall just smirks provocative in return as he watches the man get up and leave the room. He gestures to the others to take a seat too, before turning back to Simon.

“I thought we talked about this, Horan. As far as I remember we agreed you shouldn’t just walk in here without permission.”

“And as far as I remember I only agreed to that if you in return would stop sending your soldiers out to tow me in as soon as I put a foot on the damn fucking planet. Guess how I got here today, and then we can talk manners.”

Niall doesn’t even have to turn his head toward his crew to know what their faces must look like.

“Good word in return like usual. I’ll take that in mind. Congratulations on another successful mission, Captain. I’m very pleased with you, all of you of course,” he makes sure to add, sending small smiles towards the others.

“What do you want, Simon? You could have sent me a basket of sweets if you wanted to congratulate me. Get to the point would ya? It’s been a long trip and I need to rest.”

“As you will. Your rest won’t be very long though, Horan. I have a new crew ready and a smaller mission for you I need to have completed within the next week. I’ll send the crew over tomorrow morning and I expect you to be gone before lunchtime. It’s an easy piece of work. A couple of people from the Order have gotten the idea that it’s okay for them to try build their home in our solar system. I want them gone; you decide how you want to do that,” Simon explains in a matter of a fact tone, like he doesn’t give a shit that Niall hasn’t had a real rest for months now.

“A new crew? Why does he need a new crew?” Harry asks with a small voice.

“Yeah, why does he need a new crew? We’re his crew and we’ll go with him on whatever missions you have for him,” Louis adds, clearly not happy with Simon at all.

Niall can’t really say he is either, because now he has to be gone tonight. No matter what, then he can’t be here in the morning, and that gives him quite less time to get everything ready than he had hoped he’d have. At least they still has enough food on the ship that they can fly for quite a while before they’ll need to land somewhere, so really Niall mostly needs to gather whatever he wants with him from his flat and then he’ll need to make sure there isn’t any tracking devices places anywhere on his ship so he’s so no one will be able to find them once they leave.

The last one will be the biggest problem, because he has low-key tried to find it for years without any luck, but he knows without any doubt that it is there, because there’s no way they were stupid enough not to place it there before he got his ship back. When he thinks about how little trust they had in him back then, sometimes still now, then it isn’t hard to figure out that they in some way had a way to find him in necessary.

“Oh, I just assumed that Captain Horan would prefer getting a new one.”

Bullshit; they just don’t want him to get as depended on these boys as he got on his last crew in case something happens to them. They wouldn’t want their star Captain to sit standby another year because he’s too long gone to get his shit together.

Immediately he gets four pairs of hurt eyes, but he doesn’t look back at any of them; makes sure his face stays blank as he looks at Simon. If it was the case that he was actually going to complete this mission for the man, then he would probably have fought to the last to be able to get to stay with these boys, but everything considered then Simon has made his escape _way_ easier by giving him a new crew.

Now though he’ll just have to take the hurt glances and whatever scolding he’s going to get as soon as they get out of here.

“Niall?” Harry whispers in question.

“It is what it is. I’ll be ready to leave tomorrow, don’t worry,” Niall bites out, saying the last bit to Simon, before getting up and leaving the room faster than ever before, even with his bad knee.

He runs to the only place he knows he’ll be able to hide. The good thing about only having known the boys in the time period where they were living on the Conscience is that none of them knows where he lives here. He can go home and simply disappear, until he’ll have to go back to the ship.

He uses the day on gathering everything he wants to take with him when he leaves, and when everything is packed and ready, he sneaks into town, making sure all the time that no one is looking for him. He buys Lux some more clothes and some other things he might thinks she one day is going to need. He makes sure to get all his savings from the bank, which consists of enough golden coins to keep them going for years. He deletes every trace he’s able to delete from this planet; hopes that it’ll almost be like he never was here in the first place; begs that they’ll simply forget about him.

It’s a little past midnight when he slowly begins moving everything aboard the Conscience and just around two in the morning when everything is ready. At three he has found the stupid tracking device that was placed in a pile of fancy guns in his armoury he hasn’t touched a day in his life and destroyed it.

He’s just about to close the door when a little voice makes him stop dead in his tracks. “Where are you going?”

Out of the shadows of the ship all four boys step out, making Niall realise that they’ve been waiting for him here since he left. Shit! He really can’t do this right now. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to say goodbye like this and had hoped that he would be long gone before anyone would even realise that he was no longer here.

“So you’re just going to leave us like this?” Louis says blankly, but Niall can see the anger in his eyes.

“You don’t understand. I made a promise, and I won’t be able to keep it if I stay here. They’ll never accept her, and trust me I know because they’ve never really accepted me either and I’ve been here for years, doing nothing but fighting against the people who were once my own. We need to go, but you guys got lives here, family, friends, each other. I don’t want to take that from you and in return give you nothing but a life on the run.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Zayn mutters.

“You’re just too afraid to actually end up caring,” Louis adds.

“Family don’t leave family behind. You’re our family,” Harry says close to crying, and Niall immediately feels bad. He remembers both Liam and Harry telling him about how their families was killed when they were just kids and how the only ones they had left was each other, later also including Zayn and Louis, and apparently now him too.

He would have been able to handle anger, knows very well how to give back on every hurtful word they could have used against him, but seeing Harry like this, like he’s about to have a major breakdown very soon, hurts so much that he has a hard time breathing.

The silence feels like it last forever, as Niall tries his best to find a way to convince them that they shouldn’t ruin their lives because of him. He wants to tell them that he loves them too much, actually do care enough, for him to only wish the best for them, and he just doesn’t think that they’ll be happy, using the rest of their lives running away from everyone.

“You understand that if you put a foot on that ship then you’ll be traitors of the Resistance. You’ll have helped a man on probation running away. You’ll _never_ be able to come back. We’ll be running from everyone. Is that really want you want?” he asks seriously, trying to make them understand that he’s only trying to do what’s best for them.

“When we first came here you warned us to stay away. Tried to tell us we were making a mistake. We didn’t listen then, and none of us regrets it. What makes you think we’ll regret it now?”

“Could have hoped you’ve gotten smarter. I see I was wrong. It’s your choice though. If you really wanna go with us, then I won’t do anymore to stop you. Unless any of you have something important you need to get done then I guess we are leaving now.” When none of them gives him any impression that they needs to do something before they leave Niall nods towards the ship and says, “Welcome to the Conscience then. I hope you’ll like your stay.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also to find on [tumblr](http://nialliesmiley.tumblr.com/post/152195638538/raving-conscience-niall-horanzayn-malikliam). Come say hi if you fancy :)


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